Cervalces Latifrons
by pinkbagels
Summary: Fascinated by the prospect of having some useful Dopplegangers, Dr. Hannibal Lector invites Dr. Vasyl Palanchuk and his companion, Callum Wilkes, to a dinner party at his home. But all does not go to plan, and Hannibal discovers, much to his displeasure, that opposites most definitely do *not* attract.
1. Chapter 1

CERVALCES LATIFORMS

i.

There is a house, imposing, dark and Victorian, the furnishings sparse save for carefully chosen pieces, the very colours of the walls betraying a certain masculine, regal elegance. It is a beautiful home, with wisteria vines and an open view into the woodlands beyond from the windows framing the grand dining room. It is sometimes difficult to decipher if one is outdoors or in, especially with the rich herb garden decoratively displayed along one wall, embedded in a manner that looks as though it was carved into the stone. With this mossy injection, the king of this castle wields a seemingly benign reign. Classical music putters in from the confines of another room, a lighthearted baroque piece by Chopin, the stray notes seeming to dance with the shadows that twist from fat candles on the mantelpiece.

There are screams beneath the floorboards. If one was not distracted too cleverly by the house's outward beauty it would be easy to hear them. Beneath the creaks and footfalls on loose wood the basement was a perfect workshop, one that opened into a deadly cavern fit for a murderer's appetite, namely his penchant for human livers, hearts and kidneys. His was no simple art, his victims were butchered with the careful skill of a master chef and their presentation likewise resplendent.

The house welcomed this carnage. Like a true forest, the house encompasses all of nature within it, including its most vicious rule-eat or be eaten.

The roaring fire at the hearth awaits the welcoming of guests, its flames longing for the pleasant hellos that surround banal conversation and never dares to dip below the realm of the impolite. Jack Crawford would be ever the stern yet approachable patriarch, and would be eager to talk about the latest case his team was working on. Alana Bloom would arrive with her sweet smile and a bottle of wine that was far too cheap for his tastes, and he would hide it away from his table in the kitchen cupboard. Dr. Chilton, ever the pompous ass, but was a colleague with interesting enough connections that he could always glean a meal or two out of his acquaintances.

It was he who had remarked on the two as yet unknown guests who were arriving here for the first time. "He is not just a psychiatrist, but he has an officer companion as well, one who has, well...*issues*. The physical and environmental similarities are astounding-But I'm afraid they end there. Dr. Palanchuk doesn't equate as even a footnote in our circles. He wouldn't dare call himself a peer."

It amuses him that Dr. Chilton imagines, quite wrongly, that he is on the same level as himself. He would be as shocked and horrified as the next bland example at his table, and Hannibal smiled to himself at the thought of Dr. Chilton's jaw actually dropping off into a messy, meaty heap into his lap at the very thought. There would be words, no doubt a book in Chilton's case, just as there would be many miserable future conversations should his guests glean the horrors laying in wait beneath his floorboards. He did not take as much pleasure in this as he wanted, for a part of him did consider them friends, even if they were immediately expendable should the need arise. Yes, a revelation would upset them greatly, as would the fact that was not at all pork on their fork.

The dining table was set to perfection, all cutlery polished, napkins starched and ironed. The centrepiece of the table was a twisted bouquet of dried meats and dark fruits, a gothic aperitif with human flank prosciutto rolled into delicate roses.

As he rolled the meat into the tiny, delicate shape, its pliability silky beneath his touch, he thought of Will Graham. He presently wonders if that soft desire had transferred into the flavour of the meat. Taste is as malleable as the mind. He thinks of Will popping one of the tight circles into his mouth, his tongue sliding over the smooth, salty rinds of fat. It is an arousing notion, one that Hannibal needs to suppress if he is to play a calm and kind host, who thinks only of the happiness of his friends.

He stands back to admire his work, and gives its splendour a soft smile of gracious approval. He glances at his watch and with a final check of his overall appearance (it is impeccable) he retires to the living room for a pre party brandy.

The screams beneath the floorboards have stopped at last. And just in time, too. There is already an early guest.

"We're lost."

The cramped confines of the vintage Volvo was no place to start or end an argument, But with his usual, perverse need for picking every bone out of his companion's store of patience, Callum Wilkes sighed, and rumpled the already wrecked map in his fist, and sighed again, and fidgeted with his seatbelt. There is a certain impatience lurking beneath the calm intonations of an Englishman, and while Callum was far more Liverpool cockney, the constant fussy picking against that which upset his comfort betrayed a long standing cultural norm. "This is beyond the realm of Nowhere. You have really done it this time, I told you that I was the one who should drive, you never listen to reason."

"As if you are reasonable. You insisted on turning left back there when the instructions, according to *your* GPS, are that we are to continue in a straight line. Like this, you see?" A slender finger pointed at the tiny map on the screen placed in the middle of the dashboard. "We are heading in the correct direction. You are being paranoid and perhaps looking for excuses." His companion, Dr. Vasyl Palanchuk, gave Callum a decidedly exasperated sigh. "It is not enough you did not want to go, you have to now make it difficult for me as well, hoping I will relent and give up."

Callum shifted, uncomfortable in his seat. Vasyl, of course, was in his element, not quite following the GPS but not entirely not following it either, which ensured they would reach their destination through some osmosis of cosmic navigation that irked Callum's pride in his map reading. Not that the map was now easy to follow with all the extra folds and Callum's red marker lines that cut across it like veins. It was an unhealthy map now, almost impossible to follow with the stigmata of Callum's spilled coffee stains, the important landmarks along the way reduced to a sepia smudge. He tossed the injured map behind him onto the back seat, giving up. His collar was itchy. The car was too hot. The buttons on his dress shirt felt like pinpricks.

"I hate wearing these shirts. Crisp cotton my ass, it's bourgeois sandpaper."

"I wear dress shirts every day and suffer no ill effect."

"I can feel the insidious acidic power of its bleached surface eating through the marrow of my soul." Callum glanced over at Vasyl, hoping to have gotten a small rise out of the stoic doctor, and was immediately disappointed that he hadn't. Vasyl was insufferable, full of relaxed poise and an easy nature, a man far too comfortable in his own skin. Callum narrowed his eyes at him as he shrugged his long, black leather trench coat closer around himself, its oversized pockets and folds wrapping him in a cocoon of cured flesh. He would get it, he would make Vasyl's little feathers ruffle and that hurt little note in his voice would eke out beneath the soft Russian inflections of his speech.

"I think we should have turned left back at that sign."

"What sign would that be?"

"The one that said, Turn Around You Dumb Prat, You Are Going the Wrong Way."

Vasyl's lips set into a straight line. "We are nnnot lost."

Callum tried to hold it in, but it was difficult to swallow back the victorious smirk that welled within him. He got him, it was in evidence in that protracted, small stutter that always showed up when Vasyl was annoyed. An elongated 'nnn'. 'Nnnnot.'

Callum raised a dark eyebrow in acknowledgement of his victory. He brushed back his mane of messy, equally dark waves with his fingers, which was the sole brush he owned. He slouched further into his ancient, black leather trench coat that had more pockets than was sensible, as proved by how many times he'd lost his wallet within it. Of course, Vasyl had begged him not to wear it which only secured that he would and his constant insistence he scrub up at least a little resulted in the starched, uncomfortable white shirt, his neck feeling like it was being cut off at the collar.

Not that Vasyl didn't have good reason to expect some effort. For the hundredth time, Callum picked up the delicately scripted invitation card, its embossed, over the top formality suggesting this was very much a black tie affair. According to Vasyl, Dr. Hannibal Lector was one of the most prestigious psychiatrists in his field, and to have such an invite was a great boost to Vasyl's own career. He was not about to miss this opportunity no matter how much Callum scowled.

"There's only one word for a man who gives out an invitation like this." Callum dared to smell it and was horrified to discover it had the lingering scent of an expensive cologne. "Wanker."

He gave Vasyl a good once over, taking in his neat appearance, his suit carefully pressed and clean, his hair neatly trimmed, his nails perfectly manicured. Vasyl had done his best, but though he outwardly projected an image of spotless agreeability, there was still the nagging little bits of things that didn't quite fit. The small tic of anxiety that sometimes crept at the corner of his wickedly sensual mouth. The button on his left sleeve that was missing. The socks that seemed to be the same colour but in bright lights never quite perfectly matched. Always, Vasyl retained the tiniest measurements of disorder, not enough to be noticed, but enough to make a person feel unbalanced in his presence.

"Dr. Lector is said to be an excellent cook," Vasyl said. He impatiently slapped Callum's hand away from the radio, the tinny, chopped static of a classical station grating on Callum's nerves.

A flash of movement in the dark woods beside them gave Callum pause. He frowned into its hollow darkness, which seemed to expand the closer they came to Dr. Lector's stately home.

"He's going to be disappointed you are a vegetarian." He cupped his hands around the passenger window, shutting out the light in the car as he peered through them. "There's something running in the bushes just there, I think we startled it." Callum slumped back into his seat. "All cooks hate vegetarians."

"That is a sweeping, untrue and unfair generalization."

"Dr. Lector will like me better than you. He will adore me. Do you know why? Because I will request a steak, rare and bloody and will opt out of the salad accompaniment."

"That is not funny. You are nnnot funny."

Shadows of branches clawed across Callum's laughing face through the windshield. "I wonder what he will think when he witnesses you having your usual 'puke and seizure' at the grand main course presentation. That should leave quite an impression at the table. I know you want to impress him, Vasyl, but this is hardly the venue. You haven't thought this through at all."

"I will have my phobia under control," Vasyl assured him, but the tiny tic of anxiety had begun to pounce, and the corner of Vasyl's lip began to work out the problem. "I brought Gravol. Besides, Dr. Chilton will be present, and I did give him very specific instructions that he was to relay to Dr. Lector concerning my condition."

"Oh, yes, the lovely Dr. Chilton. Certainly a man I would trust with my innermost phobias and resulting physical reactions. Dearest Dr. Chilton who called your published paper a 'black stain upon the concepts of crime and criminality' and 'a dangerous hypothesis rife with inaccuracy'."

"I cannot pick and choose amongst my peers, and I take no offence to his subjective opinion of my work. He works very closely with the FBI on serial cases, as does Dr. Lector, so the very fact that I am a naysayer getting their audience proves that my work has more merit than he gives it credit for." Vasyl's gaze was steel as he concentrated on the road ahead. "You must understand how difficult it is for those enraptured with monsters to pull themselves free of the concept of a multiple murderer to understand that a singular murderer is culturally far more dangerous. As I have argued this over emphasis on serial killers has placed your average murder into a dimmed room that no one truly wishes to investigate. You yourself have seen the thousands of cold cases, lives lost to the hands of others who have washed themselves clean of the crime."

Vasyl sighed, the sadness in his voice pouring through the confines of the tiny Volvo. "There is no romance to a singular murder. It is a boring footnote that rarely finds a resolution, especially if the victim is poor, or unlikable. They are denied justice via ennui. And as a result, there is an unspoken rule creeping into our culture that is extremely disturbing. That murder is sanctioned, as long as we are not greedy."

"Bravo. An excellent lecture. Tell me, Dr. Palanchuk, will you be able to remain on that podium if he's serving roast beef?"

"The very smell of it will make me retch," Vasyl reluctantly agreed.

"We'll no doubt be late," Callum reassured him. "We'll arrive just in time for dessert, and then we make a quick exit. Put in an appearance, and gone. You'll have done your professional duty and no harm done." Callum snatched the invitation up from the dashboard and shook his head over the careful calligraphy. "There is no hope for it, we've pissed him off already. I get the impression this one is a real stickler for details. A miserable clock watcher. If he's in with Chilton he's only there to shut you down for his amusement. I hate the prat and want to punch him already. I'd rather we didn't go, let's pretend we had car trouble." He pointed at the jewelled spattering beginning to form on his window. "See? It's raining. We fell into a ditch."

"We're too close now to turn back," Vasyl reminded him. "Besides, Dr. Lector was far more open to my ideas than Dr. Chilton. In his letter to me he said he was fascinated by my observation that murder in all of its forms is the direct result of one or all of the unholy trinity of excuses-sex, personal gain, personal power."

Callum couldn't help but notice the little puff of pride at this, and his gaze travelled along the length of Vasyl's body, resting at his neck and moving upward, slowly creeping with lingering attention across the line of his jaw. "You're wearing your best suit."

"I am."

"You're quite the preener."

"It is important to look one's best when trying to give a good impression."

"You're being a preener for a prat."

"You have never met the man, you cannot be certain that is what he is. Stop smiling you are nnnot being amusing."

Callum meant to press the point further, maybe even pull Vasyl into an all out argument that he could pounce upon and twist into all sorts of illogical shapes until it ended, as it usually did, in a button or two going missing. But he was nearly clocked by the dashboard as Vasyl suddenly put on the breaks, the tiny Volvo skidding along the dark pavement in a painful, screaming stop.

The high beams shone onto a large figure splayed in the centre of the road. In front of the Volvo lay the body of a young moose calf, its throat slit. The remains were fully intact, which seemed odd to Callum, especially as they were in a forested area that had to have more than its fair share of hungry predators.

"Someone has done this," Vasyl said, his breath unsteady. "Someone left it here to rot. How very sad. What measure of hatred could do this?"

Vasyl was immobilized by the scene, his breathing unsteady as a well of feeling began to bubble to the surface of his calm veneer, a sensation Callum had learned to recognize.

"Should I be jealous?"

Vasyl frowned, confused. "It's a dead calf."

"I'm talking about Dr. Lector. Should I be jealous?" Callum undid his seatbelt and inched closer to Vasyl, who shrugged in response to his seeming anger. "You are doing all you can to be teacher's pet and I want to know why."

Cursing in Russian, Vasyl turned the key in the ignition, bringing the motor into clattering half-life. "I merely have ambition. I do not know his proclivities. Shall I believe all my preening, as you say, has paid off? Am I truly so dashing as to be whisked away by man, woman or beast at first opportunity?"

Callum couldn't stop himself from giving him a cheeky grin. "Oh, a beast. Most definitely."

Ah sweet victory, for there it was, a coquettish, near hidden blush that crept up the back of Vasyl's neck. "This is not the time or place to be toying with me. We are far too late."

"You're the one playing, pulling the shy routine." Callum dared to lean closer, fingertips teasing at the slicked back hair behind Vasyl's ear. His lips neatly touched the bony cartilage as he whispered into it: "I know you aren't shy..."

Vasyl tried to shrug him off, but Callum recognized the half hearted attempt. "We are late."

"We are late, we are late for a very important date."

"Nnnot funny."

"Where is your pocket watch?" Callum began roughly rummaging through the pockets, inside and out, of Vasyl's suit, a game the man was familiar with. "I want to smash it to bits. You won't be able to fix it and time won't matter..."

"We have to get going..."

"We are off to see the Mad Hatter, and all his little door mice. I will smash all the teacups, I will say off with their preening, pompous heads!"

His face was pressed close to Vasyl's, lips so close to his he could nearly taste his teeth. He dared them to respond to his temptation, to ruin any prospect at all of a punctual arrival. "The least you can do is let me bruise your mouth."

Vasyl's forehead pressed against Callum's, his breathing rapid with anticipation. "You are unbearable."

"I am a full library of terrible ideas and wicked temptations, and the one I'm indulging in right now involves my constant ravishing of your mouth." And before Vasyl could protest further, he captured his lips in a kiss that sent him collapsing in the driver's seat, Vasyl's body melting like pellets of ice against a warm surface. He returned it in kind, a kiss drunk with lust, its passion matching the eager beat of Callum's heart.

When the first hoof hit, it was as if it was in slow motion. A massive, horrific explosion of glass as the windshield brutally collapsed.

Pleasure was replaced with cuts and scrapes as Callum pulled Vasyl into the back seat, away from the stomping Armageddon that suddenly rained down on them from above, from the side, from the vast, angry depths of the black forest. He held his breath as he pushed Vasyl down to the floor of the Volvo. He could discern a black shadow pacing back and forth around the car before striking again, its massive hooves stomping them into oblivion.

"What is it?!"

"It's a moose."

"Of all the ridiculous..."

Callum dared to shout out from the small sliver he was afforded between the now broken front seats. "We didn't kill it, you stupid cow! We didn't do it!

She didn't care for excuses. A furious hoof tore a hole into the roof of the Volvo, and a strong, massive leg comprised of muscle, fur and evolutionary steel bled in a steaming shower over them as she tore a large gash in her leg. It pulled it out with difficulty, and Callum managed to get a good view of the beast as she staggered away from the car, both of her legs torn from the effort of her twelve hundred pound vengeance.

"Hit the horn!"

"It will only anger it! Don't move!"

As quickly as she attacked, she retreated, leaving them in a crushed tin can Volvo that barely left them room to move. She gave her fallen calf a final nuzzle before disappearing beneath the sleet of rain into the dark folds of the forest beside the road.

The forest descended into a tense, waiting silence.

It was raining hard now, thick sheets that covered the battered car and slid in a solid waterfall into its confines through the torn roof, soaking the shivering occupants within. Callum clutched a bottle of wine, a gift for the host, firmly against his chest. Through some miracle it hadn't been broken, and neither had either himself or Vasyl.

"This is not good," Callum said, near drowned from the torrent pouring down on them. "This...This is one of your terrible patterns. We're trapped in it now, we can't get out."

"It is nnnot..." Vasyl tried to protest, but his resolve was shattered before the argument could even begin. "It may not be so bad, it may be something of innocence."

"We were nearly killed by a moose in mourning, I would say this is going to be a night fit for monsters." He pushed the crushed door to his left and it fell to the ground, free of the car, its frame wobbling against the slick pavement. With difficulty he managed to get both himself and Vasyl out, but not without earning a few scrapes in the process. "How far do you think it is from here? Half an hour?"

"I think so."

"Then we'd better get our trudge on."

They abandoned the car, neatly circumventing the corpse that had caused all the trouble in the first place, and Callum edged Vasyl quickly forward so he wouldn't have a chance to look. The car lay like a crumpled can in the background, torn bits of fabric fluttering through the open windshield.

On the cracked dashboard, the embossed invitation lay white against the darkness, the ink smeared as the rain washed Dr. Hannibal Lector's careful script away.


	2. Chapter 2

CERVALICES LATIFORMS

ii:

He did not like tardy guests.

"I did warn you," Dr. Chilton said, his glass of wine held with a casual lack of grace, perpetually on the verge of spilling. "Dr. Palanchuk's irresponsible streak seems to have followed him right to the dinner table. I feel a sense of embarrassment at the situation, seeing as how it was I who brought him to your attention."

Hannibal would have much preferred to not discuss the matter of the two blank places at the table, his dinner now at risk due to his late guests. With quiet precision, he began clearing their plates and cutlery away, doing what he could to retain a certain social grace that did not place blame upon one's guests. Though he did blame them, for the lack of a phone call to inform him they would not be attending, and especially for an adequate reason. This oversight was terribly rude, and for this they naturally would have to be punished.

"I am sure there is an adequate explanation for their absence," Hannibal said, giving a polite smile that was not lost on his usual company.

Jack Crawford raised his glass to him. "I doubt he would have missed it had he known what was in store. It's a terrible omission to miss one of your dinners." Jack frowned as he watched Hannibal quickly rearrange the chairs in fastidious neatness, the evidence of the missing guests now quite erased. "Dr. Chilton said he was coming with a companion, some lower level officer from the DEA? What was his name again?"

"Callum Wilkes," Dr. Chilton interjected and Hannibal did not miss the smirking smile at mention of him. "A bit of a wild card, as they say, and he certainly says a lot about what Dr. Palanchuk's preferences are. From what I understand he is extremely unstable, but has a habit of getting results." He grinned over the rim of his wine at Jack. "It's a shame they aren't here. It would have been a fascinating exercise in comparison and contrast between your unstable boy wonder and Dr. Palanchuk's..."

"I doubt very much he can come close to the complexity that is Will Graham." Hannibal dared to tip his own glass at Will, who was now brooding and scowling at the corner of the table, as usual never quite sure how he fit into the room. The point was, he didn't at all, and it was this that filled Hannibal with an admittedly unhealthy fascination.

"You're giving me far too much credit." Will flinched at the uncomfortable smart of being the prime focus of the room. "I was believed to be a murderer and now I'm not." He gave Hannibal a steeled, knowing study. "That would make anyone 'unbalanced'."

Hannibal sipped delicately at his white wine, its flavours rich and dancing on his tongue. He did not care about Dr. Chilton's assessment of Dr. Vasyl Palanchuk, nor his friend Callum Wilkes for he had not invited them to his table for the ridiculous purpose of discussing the psychiatrist's overly simplistic hypothesis. His reasons had been entirely selfish curiosity-Dr. Palanchuk was very similar in appearance to himself, and it was with quite a shock he had discovered that Callum Wilkes was almost identical to Will Graham. It was with a sense of amusement that he had invited the not so esteemed doctor to his home, in very real hopes of ruffling Will so as to manipulate his emotions towards himself further.

Chilton was still nattering, a contention that Hannibal was beginning to lose patience with. If he kept it up he would simply have to slice out the man's tongue.

"That paper he wrote is an embarrassing waste of ink. I can't believe he even managed to get that rubbish published." Dr. Chilton raised his chin in sneering pride. "What can we expect from those who do not know the monsters we do? He finds serial killers to be an unworthy footnote in law enforcement. A dangerously simpleminded argument."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Chilton, but I do not believe that is what he is saying in his paper at all." Hannibal placed his wine glass delicately at his place at the head of the table, his mind more in the kitchen and on the food awaiting beautific display as he envisioned it brought into the dining room. "His stance is that there is an over emphasis on serial killers and more, dare I say, mundane murders are left to the devices of departments left with little manpower to properly investigate them. The sheer glut of cold cases tell a grim tale. A singular murder can often be the perfect crime." He glanced at Will as he said this, and enjoyed the little shiver that his words sent through him. "It seems less is more, at least according to the culture of killing. It is greed that is punished, not necessarily murder."

"I'd say the logic of that is a tad twisted." Jack Crawford's dark undertones wove into the conversation with probing question. "The FBI can't be taking on singular cases that a local homicide squad should be handling. I'm busy enough as it is, I don't need to be doing their job too."

Hannibal gave him a small smile. "I believe you have just proved his point."

"Absence of logic is Dr. Palanchuk's specialty." The slight slur to Chilton's speech gave Hannibal pause, and he watched with some discerning amusement to see the man was beginning to get drunk. No doubt his remaining kidney had some difficulty metabolizing the strong selection of wine. Hannibal was quick to go to him and immediately refill his glass.

"He fancies himself some sort of magical fortune teller." Dr. Chilton downed a large gulp of his replenished wine. "He watches signs and symbols to deliver answers to him that result in some kind of gory revelation, usually of murder. It's ridiculous how he goes through crime scenes like some Eastern European Angela Landsbury, pulling supposed results from thin air." He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture that wiped Dr. Palanchuk's folly aside. "What else is there to expect from a Jungian?"

Hannibal paused, his gaze darkening as he stared into the roaring fire of his fireplace. He had not heard of this predilection of Dr. Palanchuk's nor had he any idea that he had been a part of any police investigations in the past. If it was true, he had certainly kept quiet. Which only begged him to wonder why.

He did not like tardy guests. And he did not like ones with surprise connections to law enforcement.

"You're being unfair, Frederick. From what I've heard, his lectures are fascinating, bordering on the metaphysical but never quite leaving the realm of proven physics." Alana Bloom entered the room from the kitchen, a tall glass of beer held in her hand as she made her way towards Will. Hannibal watched her, and gave her as sweet a smile as he could muster, one that would placate her pure, good simplicity and assume all was well. Theirs was a fascinating triad, this woman who believed in all his best qualities, and this man, who intrinsically knew his violent truth. Between them both was a monster, one that could just as easily kill as caress.

"A psychiatrist who dabbles in physics is a self deluding one. We don't have the same cold detachment from one's work that is required in mathematics. For the psychiatrist every equation will creep towards his wishful thinking." Dr. Chilton downed the last of his wine. "I do hope we aren't waiting any longer, I am absolutely famished."

Hannibal's eyes flashed black as he acknowledged Dr. Chilton. "I agree. We have waited long enough. Please, my dear guests, do have a seat in the dining room. Jack, if you would be so kind as to assist me in the kitchen?"

He would have preferred to have stolen a moment alone with Will, to tempt him with the prospect of what, and who, was about to be eaten, and his wilful compliance in the act. But the beautiful moment that could have been shared between them had been marred by Chilton's unthinking, ignorant mouth, and Jack's easily led assurance was a calming balm. He felt a sense of pride at how enraptured Jack was at Hannibal's prowess as he looked upon the rich spread of expertly presented food, each dish artfully created with the person making the meal in mind. He had been a librarian, a sedentary, unpleasant man who had the grave misfortune to witness Dr. Hannibal Lector pocketing an extremely rare copy of The Apocrypha, a book whose themes he wished to introduce to Will's sessions. He had been an easy kill, and it had earned him an extra book on Pleistocene mammals in the bargain. It was a shame the final pages had been stained with his blood, but no matter. He had carefully disposed of them and the remaining text was beautifully intact.

To accompany a man of words he had first carefully chosen his linens, each napkin printed in an Edwardian script that depicted lines from some obscure poem of Shelly's he was vaguely familiar with. He was not fond of the romantics. Vegetables and chutneys were lined on the plate in alphabetical order, with scrolls of thin flatbreads bound with chives beside them.

"I know I've heard his name before."

Hannibal raised a quizzical brow. "Who would that be?"

"Callum Wilkes." To Hannibal's displeasure, Jack was distracted by the absent guests, the ghost of them creeping into every conversation like a latent infection. "It's like I can almost see his face, but there's something..." Jack absently picked up the entree instead of the starter, and Hannibal gently corrected him, placing a bowl of mock turtle soup in his hands instead. "Chilton said he's with the DEA, but I'm sure that he was somewhere else, maybe even in England..."

"Jack, please." Hannibal kindly bid him to go into the dining room. "The soup is getting cold."

"Of course, Dr. Lector." He closed his eyes over the steam as he brought it into the dining room. "It smells of the Divine."

Of 'The Apocrypha', Hannibal wanted to correct, which was perhaps on the mind of the librarian who provided the brains for the dish. He gathered two more steaming bowls into his hands as he left the kitchen, with Jack returning for more. His guests were already murmuring over the delicious aromas and hunger it enticed within them.

While they busied themselves with soup and conversation, Hannibal made himself distinctively absent. His desire was for the glistening, fat encrusted roast of mock pork that he was to deliver, its surface still sizzling beneath its delectable baste. When Jack returned with the stacks of empty soup bowls, Hannibal put him to work sending out the carefully arranged plates of food, with instructions that the beets should be turned towards the guest. Then, with a quiet meditation upon the succulent meal of his creation, Hannibal picked up the platter of people pork and entered the dining room to eager applause.

"Roast pork, glazed with a tamarind sauce and stuffed with a puree of figs and dates."

"It looks and smells glorious!" Alana Bloom couldn't stop herself from clapping her hands in glee. "Hannibal, really, you spoil us!"

"A true triumph," Jack said and raised a glass to toast the host, which all others, Dr. Chilton woozily included, obliged. He glanced up from his display to see Will at the other end of the table, his limpid eyes not quite taking in the scene, or perhaps with his powers of perception taking in a very different one. With Will's eyes fixed on him with such rapt steadfast attention, it was as though he was being slowly stripped naked, a fascination that Hannibal could not help but find highly erotic. He turned his attention back to the roast, his knife slicing long, delicate cuts of meat, to be arranged perfectly and with sensual longing upon Will Graham's plate.

As for Jack Crawford, he was positively salivating, and Hannibal had to wonder just how much of the cannibal was lurking within the man, for he'd eaten far more than his fair share of people by now. From the way he stared at every sliver that was taken from the roast, it was as though his body reacted with an instinctive, predator bloodlust. Jack Crawford was a glutton for human flesh. He would be sure to give him a large portion.

With everyone including himself served, he took his time to raise his glass and study the man sitting at the other end of the table. Will Graham, tired and rumpled in spiritual exhaustion, so ready to be molded and yet so stubbornly tied to being unpredictable. It was in every shivery wisp of his being how Will longed for a steadfast hand to press order upon his the murderous chaos of his heart. It was a calling Hannibal took very seriously, for Will Graham was his friend, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he wouldn't do to help him.

"Please," Hannibal said to his guests, in lieu of a toast. "Eat."

Knives and forks instantly clanged against plates as his eager guests dug in, mouths too busy taking in the splendour of the meal to waste their tongues on polite speech. Hannibal, however, chose a more refined approach to his meal, as always pulling in the scents and colours of the plate into his memory, the very molecules in the air coating his sensitive palate. He savoured every second as he cut into the meat and placed a small amount onto his fork, its fat dripping juices in delicate dots upon the circles of beets. He could feel Will's eyes on him as he brought the juicy morsel closer, the secretive thrill it gave him wholly unexpected. How pleasurable it would be to feed this meal to him, to observe the workings of his mouth as it pulverized and devoured every tender sinew.

The meat was poised at Hannibal's lips and he dared to open his eyes and look at Will, who had speared a portion for himself and was ready to take it, awakening within Hannibal a hunger of a different kind.

The doorbell rang.

Confused, Hannibal was forced to let his fork drop to his plate. He bid Will to remain in his seat as he wiped delicately at his mouth with a napkin and then rose from the table, the interrupted meal full of ellipses and question marks instead of poetry.

The rain was pouring in thick sheets outside and Hannibal's stern outline was brought into angry life by a sudden burst of lightning that lit up his living room. He approached the front door with murder on his mind, and steeling himself for any myriad of possibilities he swung open the door.

Drenched.

Bleeding.

Miserable.

Rivers of water seemed to stream off of the dark man's leather trench coat, which had far too many pockets, all of which carried bulging cups of rainwater. He soggily stormed past Hannibal and into his house, a squelching, shivering angry rat of a man and to the great shock of all present, he collapsed into Will's seat at the end of the dining table, and dared to empty several pockets of filthy water onto Hannibal's prized hardwood floor.

He plunked an empty bottle of wine beside the roast pork.

"For the host," he said, his teeth chattering so hard he could barely form words. "Or it was until we became t-traumatized and th-thirsty."

"I'm terribly, terribly sorry."

Hannibal's attention was instantly drawn to the drowned and battered creature that meekly eked his way into Hannibal's living room, and quietly shut the front door behind him. He was as soaked as his companion and from the scarlet stains coursing across his once fashionable dress shirt, it was clear that something was recently dead.

"We had a bit of trouble finding your home..."

"We tried to call," his friend shouted from the dining room, and Hannibal had the gross displeasure to witness him taking out the dripping dozen or more pieces of a smashed iPhone and placing them in a pile on the corner of his dining room table. "The battery ran out."

"You must be Dr. Palanchuk," Hannibal heard Will say behind him. He held out his hand and Dr. Palanchuk shakily took it, his grip slipping out of Will's thanks to a slick leaf stuck to his palm.

"I..." Dr. Palanchuk stared wide eyed around the living room as though he couldn't believe he'd found dry land. "I thought it was closer. We walked for over an hour..."

"Hour and a half!"

"Please," Hannibal said, ushering him towards the dining room. "Warm yourself by the fire. I am sure to have something suitably dry for you to change into. How very lucky for us that you have made it." Hannibal's false smile was transparent, and his annoyance shone through despite his best efforts. "We were just starting dinner."

Dr. Vasyl Palanchuk paused in the living room, and gave Will Graham a rather pitiful shrug. "We were attacked by a moose."

Hannibal was sure he hadn't heard correctly.

"A what?"

"It absolutely destroyed my Volvo..."

"Did you...I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"A bloody buggering fucking moose!" A strengthened, cockneyed voice with gravel undertones shot from the dining room and across the entire house. "Twelve hundred pounds of furious evolution that stopped somewhere to the left of the Pleistocenes! An angry, mourning monolith of rage against infanticide bastards, which it of course believed to be Vasyl's shitty little Volvo!"

"It was a lovely car," Vasyl sadly said.

"You see this?" The man, who had to be Callum Wilkes, pointed to the thick red stains that lay in dark splotches in what was once a fairly appropriate white dress shirt. "This is the blood of a woodland bovine at last considering it may be better to be predator than prey."

"Attacked by a moose." Jack Crawford's voice boomed with incredulous question. "What are the odds?"

Yes, what were they, Hannibal wondered, wanting to doubt the explanation outright only to be proven wrong in an instant by the distinct, bloodied hoof print on Dr. Palanchuk's stomach. "Are you injured?"

"I don't think so. Not in any way that the body cannot correct for itself. It is a very strange, very odd occurrence, I have to agree. It's something that must be made careful note of. Though, I admit, I would have preferred the Universe to be a tad more subtle in its revelations." Dr. Palanchuk draped his filthy jacket over his arm as he unsteadily made his way to the dining room. "You live a very isolated life here, Dr. Lector. I imagine it is usually very peaceful. Myself, I prefer urban environments. I am fond of nature, and I do appreciate its beautiful chaos, but it is a dangerous place for someone such as myself. Better the stuck elevator than a typhoon, if you understand."

Hannibal didn't. And while he saw the blatant, obvious physical resemblance that could create in Dr. Palanchuk a useful Doppelganger, there were immediate differences that set them apart. He was slightly smaller in stature, for one, and Callum Wilkes, Will's double as it were, had eyes far darker and hooded in a brooding misanthropy rather than personal angst. No matter, death could cover up such differences. When the time came for it to be necessary, of course.

"Ah, a warm fire." Dr. Palanchuk, with his stained, dripping jacket draped over his arm, entered the dining room with a level of cheer that transformed his appearance completely. He looked nothing at all like Hannibal now. "From Hell to Valhalla. As I have told you before, Callum, disasters can often bring about Heaven."

But his assertion was short lived, for the heady aroma of sizzling, cooked meat met Dr. Palanchuk's senses with a force that instantly hit him with a sickly pallor. He foolishly dared to glance at the glistening roast at the table, and, much to the shock of all seated at Hannibal's grand table, he fell to the floor in a dead faint.

It was Alana who leapt from her seat to aid him first, while Callum Wilkes was perfectly content to let the man remain at his feet, an expired bulk of traumatized flesh. "Is he all right?" she foolishly asked him, her hands frantically trying to wake the doctor with gentle slaps on his still damp cheeks.

Callum shrugged. "He's a vegetarian." He pointed Will's fork at Alana, which now had a large portion of librarian speared on it. "Just be thankful he passed out and didn't projectile vomit into the fireplace like he usually does."

And with that, he downed the meat in one solid, greedy bite.


	3. Chapter 3

CERVALCES LATIFORMS

iii.

He had envisioned a far different outcome than this, though he should not have been surprised that Dr. Chilton had failed to properly assess either Dr. Palanchuk or Callum Wilkes, who had both limped their way into his home like sodden spiders. Dr. Palanchuk was currently tucked away in his study down the hall, and while the man's theories were simplistic and he couldn't dare to call himself a good psychiatrist let alone a brilliant one, his company was perhaps preferable to the scruffy, inconsiderate crow he inexplicably kept.

"You started off as an English major at Oxford and then somehow ended up in Scotland Yard, in their narcotics division?" Alana bloom toyed with the vegetables on her fork, the meat merely picked at. "A bit of huge segue."

"Why wouldn't I end up in narcotics? Opium eaters, morphine dabblers, acid trip aficionados...By the end of my first semester I was an expert on every Victorian mind altering medicinal known to man. Did you know that they used to do cocaine enemas as a cure for hysteria?"

Alana choked on a beet.

"I did my final thesis on Poe. All darkness and worms, that one."

Callum eagerly continued on with his meal, his fork stabbing, his knife slicing with an expert speed that suggested he had far more experience with fast food dumpsters than proper dinner etiquette. He was equally greedy for alcohol, which Hannibal provided, noting well that this was already his third glass, coupled with the empty bottle that was still sitting on his dining room table like a jabbing tease.

It was an especially pleasant malbec, Hannibal noted. Such a pity.

"Is it true that you met Dr. Palanchuk on a case?" Jack Crawford cheerfully asked, his question more probing than genuinely curious for it was clear he was still trying to decipher where he had seen Callum Wilkes before. "I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with cases occurring off of this continent, I am busy enough here as it is. You met him in London, correct?"

"One can't be expected to catalogue the body count of the world." Callum grabbed his wine and gulped at it, sloshing it over the rim as he set it back down. "I met him due to a little...problem I had after a particularly frustrating case."

"Certainly a feeling I can well relate to." Jack Crawford had already devoured all of the meat on his plate, and was now sliding his disappointed fork across a mound of couscous. "Some days it takes all I've got in me not to smash my fist through every wall in front of me. It's definitely a job that can eat a man up. Luckily, Dr. Lector has provided some excellent counsel."

"It is not luck, Jack, you are simply a man of more strengths than weaknesses." Hannibal sipped delicately at his wine, his eyes black in the dim light of the dining room. "I am curious, what brought you to your breaking point, Mr. Wilkes? I don't imagine it was anything so simple."

"Bastard died on me." He leaned back from the table and began rummaging through his many pockets. To Hannibal's great dismay he pulled out a packet of wet cigarettes and cursed over the smashed remnants within it. "Big drug cartel go between on the East End, heroin pusher, underaged prozzies, Heisenberg grade meth, a real high end scumsucking rotter. A real pile of human trash. I put in thousands of hours to catch him. Days and weeks of my life following a chunk of garbage not worth scraping shit onto. I couldn't get an angle on him. Then I get this one break, and the one time I manage to slip in when everyone else thought he was long gone to fucking Malaysia for his disappearing act, I find him in a warehouse on the shitter with a blown out needle in his arm."

He stared at his pack of crumpled, broken cigarettes with such miserable concentration Hannibal had to wonder if the man had his own tortuous memory palace from which to pluck his most ghastly life moments. It proved a certain level of masochism on his part. In this he was not so different from Will Graham after all.

"So long story short, I get sent to Vasyl and...Frankly, he didn't help me at all. He's too full of everything around him to really understand what the hell he's on about most of the time, at least, not until well after the fact. Which is the whole reason I was messed up in the first place, you know, being all wrapped up in what the future was going to hand me with that piece of drug dealing pus."

"Such imagery," Chilton said, and took a bobbing sip of his wine.

"It's not his fault, it's just who is. It's not easy dealing with someone who is a constant viewfinder of terrible things about to happen, only in his infuriating slow motion pace.". He reached for his glass of wine, only to motion to Dr. Chilton to just hand him the bloody bottle already, which Chilton more than happily complied. With his rapt audience, Hannibal Lector included, Callum Wilkes downed a good half cup of wine straight from the bottle before continuing.

"This whole thing with the moose. It's not his fault, but in a way it is. He's a cartographer of chaos. There's some very odd occupational hazards attached to that sort of expertise."

"How very fortunate we are to be at a table full of many special talents." Hannibal gave Jack Crawford a bemused smile and Will Graham, who had refused to return to the table and had set up shop in brooding unhappiness before the fire, turned away from the not so slight dig. He would not let him get off so easily, not with his stubborn wish to refuse to join him for dinner. "Will Graham is also a man of unique insights." Hannibal couldn't prevent the note of pride creeping into his tone. "I don't doubt that Dr. Palanchuk's 'navigations' as you call them get the results wanted, but we have plain evidence that our esteemed Mr. Graham's talents are extremely effective. He has the gift of empathy."

Will scoffed at this. "A gift. That's what they keep calling it."

"It's a monumental talent, Will, and not something you should shy away from in conversation. You are a unique individual with a refreshingly differing point of view from everyone in this room. What sets you apart should make you proud."

"Pride never comes into it when I have to walk through streams of blood." Will gave Callum an unsteady nod, his discomfort at being so openly displayed painful to watch.

"I don't understand," Callum said to him. "What do you mean, you have 'empathy'?"

Will closed his eyes, his words carefully chosen so as not to offend, for he did want to offend, Hannibal knew. He was tired of being questioned and prodded about who he was and why he was that way. It was an exhausting, daily task he resented having to repeat.

"I get into the minds of killers, I *see* what they see. At crime scenes, I become the killer, recreating the crime in the exact way it happened within my mind and through my imagination. It is not an easy process, and there are many times I feel as though I am losing myself..."

"Pure empathy is gift, but it can be a cruel one," Hannibal agreed. "It takes a great emotional toll on Will."

There was a collective nod of assent at this, and a gentle tap of a glass from Alana had the entire table tipping their glasses to Will in silent appreciation for the hard, tortuous work he consistently did for them. He stood uneasy at the fireplace, looking every inch as though he wanted to hurl himself onto the flames as a means of escape.

"Bullocks. Utter bullocks."

Will's head turned towards Callum with a distinctive, shaking tic.

"As if getting into the heads of killers is torture. Don't be a bloody moron, we're all killers given the right set of circumstances and motives, there's not an innocent here among us. A baby will bloody well bite you when you don't give it what it wants, it's no different for the rest of us. We've just figured out it's probably easier to get along if we aren't leaving blood trails from one neighbour's house to another, and you can damn well believe that was the order of the day back in the good ol' times." He shoved a forkful of meat into his mouth. "For God's sake, it's not just human nature, nature itself is violent, just ask Vasyl's poor Volvo."

A sneering Callum pointed his now empty fork at Dr. Chilton for emphasis. "We're all one petty annoyance away from becoming mass murderers. This one here, first for not telling you, Dr. Lector, of Vasyl's severe meat phobia, and secondly for just looking like he does. Like a little weasel. If you want to go walking in minds, I've killed this wanker in mine three times already, in highly creative ways. The only reason he's still alive is because I'm tired from the long walk here, and ruining Vasyl's tenure will create a sickening, long winded symposium of whinging. I couldn't bear the repercussions."

"Hear, hear!" a now extremely drunk Dr. Chilton agreed.

"I know I've seen you before," Jack Crawford growled. "As for this discussion, I'm taking great offence at your dismissal of Will's abilities. His methods get proven results."

"So I'm expected to feel sorry for him for getting into the heads of killers? Into the minds of the darkest recesses of human apathy, into the gothic caverns of aggression where it takes strangely fascinating shapes? Doesn't seem like an unbearable trip to me. If he has pure empathy, as you say, Dr. Lector, then I hardly would consider that a burden. Not unless you told me he was trapped in the mind of the average grocery shopper every minute of the day, his brain constantly assailed with the mundane lists of things to do and what's for lunch and what exactly is the best dish detergent to buy. If his head was forced into the space of everyone's empty conversations and mindless routine bric a brac, *then* he would have my sympathy!"

"I know who you are!"

Jack Crawford stood up from his seat, his chair scraping angrily against the floorboards. Hannibal felt a pang of chagrin at this, his lovely floor was getting an unfair beating.

"You're Callum Wilkes!"

"I recall that's how you were introduced," Dr. Chilton dared to remind him.

A highly unpleasant vein pulsed in Jack Crawford's forehead, his anger not abated by the gentle pleas of Alana beside him, who begged him to sit down. "You were the one who found Wilson Winter."

"Drug dealing underaged prozzie selling scumbag shitball, yes, that was me."

"Only you didn't just find him." Jack dared to pace around the table, the remains of his dinner ignored. No matter, he'd simply hoovered the meat and Hannibal now enjoyed the show of latent predator instinct it brought to the fore. "You were found, sitting on his partially burned corpse, your face covered in his ashes and drinking wine from his hollowed out skull!" Jack stood to his full height in furious triumph. "You ate his femur!"

Now, this did capture Hannibal's attention, as well as Will's, who glanced up at him in incomprehensible confusion, the flames from the fire bathing him in an orange glow that should have been soothing, but instead made his shivering, sweaty form appear as though he were electrocuted. Hannibal wondered where Will's headspace was now, and genuinely felt a pang of pity for him. He would have to do something later to help ease that discomfort.

"That certainly says a lot about your tabloid journalism, and how a story can get out of hand," Callum said, downing the last of the bottle of wine and reaching for more, only to discover it was the gift he'd brought and it was still empty. "For your information, it was a Guinness I was drinking out of his skull and of course I wasn't munching on a BBQ 'd femur. It was his forearm."

"You murdered and cannibalized him!" Alana exclaimed.

"Actually, no," Jack Crawford said, stepping back from his protein induced anger rather abruptly. "Wilson Winter had already been dead several days..."

"What?"

"It was a lesson learned. One shouldn't mix obscure Eastern philosophies with pure methamphetamines." Callum shrugged. "It's not like they could charge me with anything, there's technically no law against eating a dead body if you haven't had any hand in making it that way. The most they got me on was indecency to a corpse, but considering he died on a makeshift plastic pail crapper it wasn't like I could make that scenario worse."

Alana held her hand to her mouth. "I'm going to be sick."

For the first time in his life, Hannibal wasn't sure what to make of the information given to him. He stared blankly at Callum, who seemed wholly oblivious to the fact that he, with his scavenger proclivity, a living human carrion crow, had done the unthinkable.

He'd turned Hannibal off his meal.

"But the body...Three days...It would be rotting," Dr. Chilton's face twisted into one of supreme disgust. "Ew."

Alana began to retch.

"I once ate a McDonald's hamburger I found in a pocket of this coat. It might have been three months old. Maybe four. Kind of had the same consistency."

"I need a glass of water."

Alana left the dining room, her hand still over her mouth, and Hannibal took it as his cue to quickly remove the remnants of his beautiful meal, now reduced to gag inducing thoughts of rotting corpses crawling with maggots.

Dr. Chilton's head bobbled woozily on his neck. "Is it already time for dessert?"

Will followed Hannibal into the kitchen with empty hands, not even pretending to assist in clearing the table. His face was earnest in its worry, his entire body shaking with a rising adrenaline as fight and flight began their intense battle within him. "What is that...That *thing* sitting at your table?"

Hannibal glanced over Will's shoulder, making sure none of the other guests would be able to eavesdrop in on their very private conversation. "A conundrum."

"Why is he here? Why is Dr. Palanchuk here?" Will closed his eyes as Hannibal slid behind him, his strong hand steadying his shaking with just a palm upon his shoulder. "Since the second they walked into the door, they felt wrong. Not in any way I can properly explain it, just...wrong. Like if you're looking in a mirror and your reflection is facing the wrong way."

Hannibal closed his eyes as he took in the scents of Will's adrenaline charged body, fear and anger battling in equal hormonal balance within him. It took great restraint on Hannibal's part not to simply embrace him and hold him close, to revel in the sensations the man was positively stewed in. Any other time, Will would no doubt be compliant, Hannibal's touch a welcoming balm against the onslaught of his own mind's unbearable keen perception.

"You should kill him."

Hannibal dared to place both hands on Will's shoulders, the urge to kiss the back of his perspiring neck now so powerful he dare not deny it. His lips were the delicate brush stroke of an artist's favourite tool on canvas. "He is rancid," Hannibal whispered into Will's ear, his mouth creating more tentative strokes, an outline upon his masterpiece. "He has no place at my table."

"He isn't being truthful," Will said, and to Hannibal's delight leaned back instinctively into his protective touch. "Well, no, he is...but..." Will frowned, his mind clearly trying to piece together the vast disordered confusion that was Callum Wilkes and his ghastly influence upon what should have been a pleasant evening. "There's something more to his story. The worst part is that I think he already told us." He turned his head, his own lips now level with Hannibal's, a genuine understanding of how easy it would be to capture them an unspoken tension between them. "I don't think that's the only time he's done that to a corpse."

"Nor do I," Hannibal agreed, and smiled. "Just a few days ago, you had dared to profess to me that you thought this evening was going to be boring. How wrong you were."

He broke free of Will as he heard Alana's steps click down the narrow corridor leading to the back of the house. She was making her way back with determined poise after having been sick in his washroom. Her lack of stomach for Callum Wilkes' story irked him, for surely she had plenty of experience with similar horrors, police descriptions that told of far worse crimes, supposed indignities on bodies that he himself had created that had never, from what he had witnessed, given her a sleepless night. As Mr. Wilkes had said, his hadn't even been a crime, it was simply unpleasant. Perhaps it had been his powers of description that had made her so uncharacteristically queasy.

'Or it is far simpler than that,' Hannibal thought as she walked into the kitchen, her heels clicking like flint on the hardwood. 'She is not a glutton. All of this consuming of the dead is leaving her overfed.'

"Can you believe that guy?" Alana fumed as she poured herself another glass of water from the tap and downed it in greedy gulps. "From what I know personally of Dr. Palanchuk he is a very kind and pleasant man. I don't understand why he hangs out with such a rude jerk!"

"I wouldn't say he was rude," Hannibal gently corrected her. "Belligerent, yes. But it is not rude to be honest. It was Jack who brought up his unfortunate controversy, and to Mr. Wilkes' credit he answered in the only way he knew how."

"He could have been less graphic..."

"That may be true, but I get the impression Mr. Wilkes is not a man of few words or one who commits sins of omission." Hannibal opened the door to his dining room just a sliver, revealing the drunken figure of Dr. Chilton chattering away in laughing revelry with Callum Wilkes.

"I once ate a hot dog that was a week old. It was during my college days."

"Expiry dates are for pussies," Callum agreed, and both he and Dr. Chilton clinked empty wine glasses.

Hannibal closed the door and turned to Alana. "It is extremely rude not to reveal a person's dietary needs to the cook. I trust that had I known of Dr. Palanchuk's meat phobia this evening would have been far smoother, and he would have been able to keep his wild companion under strict observance."

"Frederick is an ass for not telling you. It's a cruel joke." She crossed her arms, her heel tapping in impatience. "I'm going to check on Dr. Palanchuk."

"I'll come with you," Will said.

She was well ahead of him, but Hannibal stopped Will with a hand firmly placed on his shoulder. "Be careful," Hannibal warned him, an unpleasant feeling welling within him at the thought of Will being in a small room with his still mysterious Doppelganger. "Just as his companion is not all that he seems, I doubt Dr. Palanchuk is either."

"I'll keep that in mind," Will said, and absently for himself, but with heightened significance for Hannibal, he dared to reach up and gently touch the hand still resting on his shoulder, a hand that remained there as he walked away, turning into a most subtle caress.


	4. Chapter 4

CERVALCES LATIFRONS

iv.

Callum Wilkes had long discovered that, plied with enough wine, the average asshole can become bearable. This may not have been a proven fact in his own case, but certainly the snottier components of Dr. Frederick Chilton's vanity took on a more muted stance. His usual superior posturing had now degenerated into the drunken happiness of a bullied frat boy.

"Wanting to kill me in three different ways denotes a certain sentiment of likeability." Dr. Chilton's words were barely decipherable beneath the weight of wine, and Callum was fully eager to crush them outright. Where possibly could there be another bottle? "I have many patients who have admitted to killing me in their minds a hundred ways or more. I find this lack of effort on your part either a symptom of profound laziness, or you don't hate me quite so much as you profess to."

"Oh, no, I definitely hate you."

"I know, I know..." Dr. Chilton waved away Callum's retort and, when Jack Crawford was safely away from earshot and in the study, on the ruse of 'checking up on Dr. Palanchuk', he tilted his wobbling head low and whispered to Callum, "I did it on purpose to do in Hannibal."

Callum frowned at this. "So you made Vasyl a patsy for whatever pissing contest you're having with this overdone Blumenthal?"

"It's far more serious than that," Dr. Chilton said, bidding him to keep his voice down. He pulled the hideous centrepiece closer to his face as a means of hiding behind it. Black feathers poked at Callum's chin, and he spat them away. "Will Graham once believed Dr. Hannibal Lector was a serial murderer and cannibal. Now he does not believe it. You tell me, how does such a talented empath get something so wrong about a dear, dear friend?"

"They've been in the kitchen a long time." Callum observed the small door dividing the space, noting well that portions of their conversation had been snatched by the kitchen occupants.

"As for your unfortunate past life issue...I once ate a hot dog that was a week old. It was in my old college days."

"Expiry dates are for pussies."

They clinked empty glasses.

"They have a strange closeness, don't they? Good friends." Chilton's face twisted into a sneer. "Besties."

Callum scoured the various surfaces around him for more possibilities for booze. The chiselled herb garden to his right was woefully organic as were most of the areas of the home. With its dark colours and hard, sparse furnishings, it felt stubbornly in control, a Scandinavian gothic that suggested Morticia Addams regularly shopped at Ikea.

"Who do you mean?"

"Hannibal Lector and Will Graham. Such an intensive little duo. So very close. So very *intimate*." He became instantly quiet as Will Graham left the kitchen, a stomping Alana Bloom behind him. She shot Dr. Chilton an angry glare, one that made no question of her contempt for him.

"Poor Alana," Chilton tutted. "She seems to have put herself in the middle of a struggle that has very little to do with her, save being a fairly benign cover story. Come on, you've seen the way Hannibal looks at Will Graham, like he's a little piece of filet mignon cooked to perfection. If Will Graham and Hannibal Lector aren't sharing space in a closet together, I am myself a piece of bacon."

"Being in a closet suggests they are hiding something. But as you say, the clues are obvious enough for even you to notice. If there is something in there, it's not their affection."

Everyone hid their booze. There was always a selection tucked away in some unobtrusive little spot to get a man through his darker days, a little jewel of something hard and clear...

Aha! There it was, nestled near the far end of the fireplace, a little side table that simply had to have a store of something alcoholic. Callum scrambled from his seat to investigate and after a bit of fussing with the oddly shaped cabinet door, he pried it open and brought out a very large, very full bottle of vodka. There was a note attached to it, and a dusty golden bow, signifying it had been a special gift, but one that had never been enjoyed. The note was in a faded script, blue ink neatly trapped on plain cardstock. "Don't think of me-Clarice."

Callum twisted the cap and then reached deep into the cabinet, snatching two shot glasses with the tips of his fingers.

He poured himself and Dr. Chilton an unhealthy measurement into the shot glasses and bid him to join him. With an amused glint in his eye, Chilton held up his glass to Callum's and on the count of three they brought the drink and its burning, bitter elixir to their lips and downed it in a synchronized gulp.

"Gah!" Chilton slapped the table. "Vicious poison!"

"Again?"

"Absolutely!"

Another round and Dr. Chilton was messily, irredeemably sloshed. His head collapsed to the surface of the table, his mouth smushed as he continued to attempt coherent conversation. "Tell me, Mr. Wilkes...You are a man who has partaken of the forbidden fruit, that being the flesh of another human being. Did you notice, by chance, any similarities between that and your serving of roast pork?"

Callum felt his gut clench. Of course there were similarities. Pork and people, people and pork.

He poured himself another shot.

"Can't say I would. My tastes are on the gamey side."

"Yes. Of course. Dr. Lector only uses the freshest of ingredients."

He frowned, taking in what Dr. Chilton had left unspoken. "Look, are you suggesting Dr. Lector just served me up some slices of personhood steak?" He poured himself another shot, not liking the sobering tone the conversation was taking. Chilton bid him to pour him another as well, and Callum did, only he was stingier this time.

"You heard it yourself. 'Will Graham is a man of incredible powers of empathy, you get us the results we want, oh bravo to you, Will, bravo'. And yet, he was so terribly, terribly wrong about his very affectionate psychiatrist and wonderful friend. How embarrassing for him." Chilton's propped his flopping head up with his fist. "Your dear, dear special friend Vasyl also has perceptive abilities that have been helpful in solving a handful of problematic cases. I ask you, has he ever been wrong?"

Callum felt his veins freeze. "He's wanted to be."

"But he never is, is he?"

"No."

"Neither is Will Graham."

"If that is the case, if you're correct...Which is absolutely mad...Then Will Graham is Dr. Hannibal Lector's partner in crime."

"Partners. Oh yes, partners in oh so many ways. As for being mad, well..." Chilton begged for another shot, and Callum grabbed the large bottle, happy to oblige. "We're all mad here."

Jack Crawford's hand suddenly appeared over the rim of the shot glasses, preventing a generous pour. His deep voice boomed across the expanse of the entire house:

"Can someone please take Doctor Chilton's keys!"

With Dr. Chilton's cheek now firmly plastered on the dining room table and his snoring marring the otherwise peace of the scene, Callum woozily staggered towards the study. Behind him, Jack Crawford entered the kitchen, presumably to see what was taking Dr. Hannibal Lector so long to announce dessert. Callum figured it was a rather obtuse way of letting his guests know they had most profoundly let him down. A prissy stance, in Callum's opinion, since with the injection of Vasyl into the party one couldn't help but watch as all plans descended into chaos. It was who he was and what he attracted. The random lights of a disordered universe.

There was little evidence that this was the case as Callum entered the study to see his friend (his oh so special, special friend, as Dr. Chilton would so succinctly put it) poring over various texts that he had pulled from Hannibal's generous library. The study, in contrast to the rest of the house, was painted in muted pastel hues and dull greys. A nearby lamp with a wide shade gave off a harsh light that bathed the winged back chair beneath it in a bleached glow. Vasyl had stacked a number of books on the chair, and was standing with an open book at the mantel of yet another fireplace, this one small and cold beneath the leather bound tomes that stretched to the ceiling above it.

Will Graham and Alana Bloom had their back to the entrance, and did not notice Callum had snuck his way in. "He's incorrigible," Will spat. "I don't understand your attraction to him at all."

"Atrocious." Alana shook her head. "Just atrocious."

"He is not being miserable on purpose, you must understand, that is simply how he is. What's in his head comes out of his mouth, he has no filter. I personally find that rather refreshing, though I admit at times it can be frustrating in more polite, dishonest company."

Will let out a low laugh at this. "Are you saying Dr. Lector is being dishonest?"

"I am saying many, many things can be hidden beneath polite smiles and formal gestures." He smiled at them both, the open book pressed close to his chest as he looked past their shoulders into the corner of the room. "Callum, I hear you are being insufferable."

Callum shrugged as he approached their gossipy circle, not exactly pleased to be a part of the group but if it put Vasyl at ease then it was no real bother. "It's kind of my job," he said by way of explanation. "You doing all right?"

"Other than mortified embarrassment over making such a dramatic entrance, I am fine." He picked another few books off of the shelf and, as was his habit, randomly shuffled them when he put them back. "The attack from the moose was an added stress, I admit, but I am forever at the mercy of my phobia no matter what extenuating circumstances surround it."

"Dr. Chilton is an asshole." Alana tossed aside Hannibal's books on the winged back chair and flopped into it. "He should have told Hannibal about your condition, that was an extremely rude prank."

"I've never seen anyone go into a dead faint over a roast before." Will stayed in the shadows, a marked seclusion that Callum found interesting, especially in light of what Dr. Chilton had just told him. Was he a human meateater, a cannibalizing demon that hitched a ride on the devil that was Dr. Hannibal Lector? He seemed too nervous and twitchy to be a true predator, but as Vasyl himself said, so much could be hidden beneath a veneer of false innocence.

"I imagine going to grocery stores is difficult."

"Impossible," Vasyl cheerfully agreed. "As are restaurants, hot dog stands, luncheons, meetings...dinner parties. I took a very real risk coming here, and for that I cannot truly blame Dr. Chilton. A simple slice of bacon can cause a similar reaction." He smiled over the book he had in his hands and then placed it in another random spot on a completely different shelf. "I would usually say no to such an invite, but I felt such a strong compulsion to be here. The attack from the moose only set to solidify that resolve. I can only wonder what other strange connections will be revealed and what they will eventually mean."

'It wasn't pork,' Callum wanted to say, but he held back, not sure exactly what to reveal to the people standing in the room with him, who by all accounts were number one suspects. That was if a drunken Dr. Chilton were to be believed. He seemed to have his own petulant vendetta against Hannibal, one that had nothing to do with either Vasyl or himself and they had become simple collateral damage in his rush to a very twisted truth.

Vasyl softly smiled as he stared upwards at the rows of books. "I am waiting for something to be revealed to me, for I can sense that it is here where a piece is set to fall into place, another landmark on a very mysterious map."

"You seem to take a lot of stock in these 'impressions'," Will said. He crossed his arms as he looked on Vasyl. "Your friend here doesn't believe my empathic understanding is as special as everyone else thinks it is."

"Does that bother you?"

"No. I'm used to people not understanding me. It's his dismissive attitude I take offence to. He's a terrible public relations model if he keeps making enemies in your name with his close minded viewpoint. He doesn't exactly make me want to believe in you."

So, he has claws after all, Callum noted.

"And so you should not believe in me." Vasyl continued his intensive searching of Hannibal's library, delicate fingers lightly touching the spine of every book along the way. "You should only observe, you should not listen to my words, or my theories. I would prefer you come to know what I do completely enmeshed in how it happens-a phenomenon in which you already are simply by being present."

His hand paused over a long, slim volume, the binding blank. It took some effort for him to reach it since it was on one of the higher shelves, but with his fingertips tearing at the canvas binding he managed to set it free with a gentle drop into his open palm. He caressed the blank cover with a shining reverence that made the hairs on Callum's neck stand on end.

"And so it continues. I have been searching for a book, for a particular book, for quite some time. It is a book I have never seen and did not know its existence until an anthropologist friend mentioned its title. I was curious about the occurrence of certain Pleistocene mammals in the region where I grew up and I had been in regular correspondence with a librarian here in Baltimore. He assured me he had the exact book I wanted." He closed his eyes and without looking at the inside cover, recited: "'A Concise Anatomical History Of The Pleistocene Era'." He opened his eyes and with a gleeful calm presented the book to Will Graham. "Please. Open it."

Will frowned, his hand shaking slightly as he took the oversized, but thin volume from Vasyl's confident grip. The air around Will felt overcharged, as though every little hair on his neck was ready to ignite into sparks. A quick glance told Callum that Will was not immune to Vasyl's influence, for his neck was covered in gooseflesh, a shiver passing through his arm as he opened the book.

"It's..."

"It's the same book," Vasyl finished for him and Will gave an enraptured Alana a shrugging nod. "Now, if you could turn to the page..."

"Parlour tricks mean nothing, you could have plucked this book out earlier and saw the cover and made up this whole thing."

"I am sorry, Mr. Graham, but I'm not interested in your opinion of my interpretation of the information being presented to me. I am interested in what that book wants to tell me." Vasyl was at a slight loss for words and struggled to say what Callum already knew-That nothing in a conversation with Will Graham could be trusted.

"I do nnnot play games."

Annoyed, Will turned the book towards Vasyl. "Why do you need this now? What's so supposedly important that you can't just wait on your librarian?"

"Because this book will reveal something important that I need to know." He took it from Will's grasp and began scanning the inside index, an action that made Callum's blood curdle. Dr. Chilton's words kept revolving in his head, and he had to wonder, had he really just eaten someone of the fresh variety? Is this really what this was all about and, as usual, here was Vasyl, not quite following the guide but getting to its rotten conclusion anyway. He shoved Will Graham out of the way and tried to close the book, to stop the inevitable madness, but Vasyl put his hand in the way, and the pages sandwiched his grip.

"Why do you have to do this now?"

"What is wrong with you? I am working."

"You are acting like a madman. These people don't understand a word you are saying. They think you are insane."

"Get your hands off the book, you'll wreck it!"

"Maybe that's what's *supposed* to happen!"

Much to Callum's displeasure, Vasyl managed to wrench the book free. He opened it, and though his hand had originally been trapped at the index-surely the other two had noticed this?-it was now more than halfway through the text,

Callum felt sick. The air was crackling and alive with an electricity he never understood and yet was equally compelled to follow, its guidance an unruly misery that never once in his experience led to anything positive.

'Not fair,' his inner voice, a tiny shred of conscience, said to him. 'It gave you Vasyl.'

"Don't read it." With furtive glances at the silent, confused pair that had wandered into their drama (or was it the other way around?) he inched closer to Vasyl, and placed his hands on his shoulders, a gentle embrace that his body longed to melt into.

It was not without a lingering sadness that Vasyl looked up from the page marking out the pattern they were now locked into, the corner of his mouth now twitching in that tiniest indicator of anxiety. It killed Callum every time, and all he wanted to do in that moment was toss aside the bloody book and kiss away the evidence of fear and understanding that trembled on Vasyl's perfect lips.

"Cervalces Latifrons." He could feel Vasyl's heart sink. Despite his need to pursue what was given to him, he always clung to the hope that he would be wrong. His fingers clasped around a small, rectangular piece of red plastic that had been embedded in the centre of the page. "It was a giant moose that was once very prevalent in the region where I grew up. We found a set of its antlers on my grandmother's farm when I was a boy in the Ukraine."

Alana dared to pluck the small piece of red, rectangular plastic from Vasyl's fingers, her brow furrowed as she turned it over. It had a bar code and a graphic depicting the current logo of the George Peabody Library. "It's a visitor's library card, used for permission to view special reference documents and books. You have to give it to the librarian when you're done, what's it doing in here?"

"I think it's fairly obvious, Hannibal simply forgot to hand it back." Will took the small, seemingly inoffensive piece of plastic from Alana and quickly pocketed it.

"But why would it be in that book? What possible interest would he have in it in the first place? He has no big love for animals, let alone ancient ones." Alana looked over Vasyl's shoulder, at the careful black and white ink drawing that depicted the gargantuan size of the moose in relation to the average man. The human figure was several inches short of its shoulder. "This is an old text, it's been rebound."

Vasyl flipped to the front of the book. "1887, to be precise."

"This was held in a reference library, it's no doubt rare and was kept there for historical reasons. Why would he have it?"

Will gave her a question a twitching, short laugh. "Are you suggesting Hannibal *stole* it?" He tapped at the book, which Vasyl refused to relinquish. Callum could see Vasyl was lost inside of it already, gleaning information from the text like a diviner over bones. "You don't even know if it's from there, there's no watermark, no indication it was sitting on a reference shelf."

"It's been rebound."

"You said it yourself. It's an old book."

The argument continued no further, for the subject of their prodding disagreement appeared in the doorway. Dr. Hannibal Lector surveyed the scene of guests crowded into his study with quizzical amusement, only for his gracious demeanour to instantly change to surprised question the second he saw what was in Vasyl's hand. Callum did not miss the fleeting nervous glance from Will Graham to Hannibal. He did not miss the instinctive need Will Graham had to protect that little plastic piece of evidence laying in red anticipation in his jeans pocket. He was smiling at Hannibal, his posture easy, but he had shoved his both of his hands into the pockets of a relaxed pair of Levis, a hot little nag of doubt searing his palm, the ramifications making him wince.

Callum didn't need the gift of empathy to recognize when guilt covered guilt.

"Please," Hannibal said to them, his arm outstretched, guiding the way back to his dining room table in theatrical elegance. "Join me for dessert."


	5. Chapter 5

CERVALCES LATIFRONS

v.

Jack Crawford paced in Hannibal's kitchen, his latent fury from earlier not quite abated. He twirled Dr. Chilton's car keys in a constant circle on his forefinger. "You're telling me you had no idea who he was?"

"Jack, I am not so naive as to have two unstable guests at one table. I had no idea who Dr. Palanchuk's friend was, and I made the unfortunate assumption that as a fellow psychiatrist he would bring someone suitable." A blatant lie, but one Jack would easily swallow. Frankly, he was finding the man's whining intrusion annoying, and Hannibal would have much preferred to be left alone in his kitchen to properly fuss over his latest dessert creation, a compote of dark cherries left partially whole, with an additional drizzle of a rich sherry sauce. The sauce would be lit as it was brought to the table, making it a rich, dramatic flambe. It was his last attempt to save the culinary delights of the evening, and he did not want to spoil it.

"You said you went to check on him and found him well." Hannibal delicately drizzled his sauce onto each portion, which was, if one wanted to be metaphoric about it, a masterwork depicting the artful beauty of congealed blood. Setting it aflame was a signal to the heart, a fiery beat he wished to offer to Will. Hannibal wondered if Will would understand his efforts. A heart aflame was always set to burn the one who touched it.

"What is he like?"

"Doctor Palanchuk? He's a pleasant enough man, I guess. Bit of a...Not sure how else to call him...A bit ditzy."

Hannibal smiled to himself at this, for it was as he'd suspected. "Perhaps he is more intelligent on paper."

"No, no, nothing like that. The man is clearly brilliant. He's got that awkward genius thing down pat, it's just..." Jack rubbed at his face with his hands, his exhaustion plain. "I had an interesting enough conversation with him but it was hard to understand him. I don't know how to explain it. It's like when you're around him everything starts *moving*. The books, the light, the furniture-he can't keep anything where he finds it, he's always picking things up and putting them down. Then he gets excited over what he's taking about and moves his hands around and whatever he's put in them and, well...He makes the room spin." Jack pinched his temple. "I only talked to him for about ten minutes and I have the worst headache."

"I will get you an aspirin."

"I could use a drink."

"Will this sherry do?"

"More than suitable."

Hannibal quickly grabbed a very small, delicate glass and made a great show of pouring it for Jack before returning to the careful task of preparing his cherry compote flambe. "So you are saying Doctor Palanchuk has taken it upon himself to rearrange my study?"

"He's quite enamoured with your collection of books. He hasn't exactly been careful with your organizing of them, I'm afraid, but his enthusiasm over the texts is, for him, trumping this entire party."

"Considering his entry, I believe he is simply too embarrassed to join us. I will be sure to force him to the table for dessert." The white bowls were a wonderful contrast to the darkness of the cherries, like bone cut with blood. "I feel terrible that he was not able to partake of dinner with the rest of us."

"Yes. Well." Jack's latent anger began creeping upwards again, the unspoken rudeness of Dr. Chilton's omission fuelling it. "We all know who's responsible for that. As for your study, you're probably right, all that nervous, moving energy of Dr. Palanchuk's is no doubt a reaction to being singled out." Jack tipped his tiny glass of sherry at Hannibal. "Not to mention being attacked by a moose."

He laughed as he downed the sherry, his head shaking when he was done. "A goddamned moose. Talk about a good excuse to be late, you can't fault him on anything. He really is a strange fellow."

"I was also unaware he had connections to law enforcement. Were you aware of this, Jack?"

"He was never named outright in the Wilson Winter case, but I'm far more familiar with his companion's issues. I am guessing he was Mr. Wilkes assigned psychiatrist after the incident. As you can imagine, the whole Callum Wilkes controversy put everyone associated with him in a very bad light. The tabloids in England had a field day. I'm sure he's the doctor they were all calling on to have his license revoked simply for treating him afterwards. It didn't matter that Wilson Winter was, just as Mr. Wilkes described him, a piece of human garbage. The strangeness of what Wilkes had done was too much for them, the entire country wanted Wilkes locked up." Jack's hands were deep in his pockets, his thick shoulders hunched in a knowing shrug. "Disturbing as it was, the facts are he didn't break the law."

"They travelled to a new continent together. That denotes a certain closeness that is far more than a doctor-patient relationship."

"That was controversy number two. From what I understand of that story, Callum Wilkes became embroiled in a very torrid affair with his psychiatrist, who was already being stalked by a former patient for the same reason. I'm guessing Dr. Palanchuk has some issues with boundaries."

Jack tipped the kitchen door open, just a crack, getting another good view of Dr. Chilton and his new friend, Callum Wilkes. "I just don't know what he sees in that guy. You know, it's a funny thing, in just the right light he looks like a very dirty, rotten, miserable little Will. Dr. Palanchuk has some of your features as well. He has an accent that's much thicker than yours, where did you say he was from?"

"I believe he is Russian," Hannibal said, being purposefully obtuse.

But Jack didn't hear him. "Chilton's a mess. You're going to need a mop to clean him up."

Hannibal arranged the bowls on a long, silver platter with careful symmetry, and when it met his precise satisfaction, he stood back, admiring how it subtly represented a vivisectioned human carcass. Dark fruits and cut melon lay piled in the middle of the carefully arranged white dishes, which became the ribs, bundles of green grapes a rough outline of intestines, watermelon wedge lungs and a whole, red delicious apple to signify the heart.

He would hand the apple to Will. A symbolic gesture of what he was determined to offer him. He would watch, enraptured, as Will tore into the sweet flesh with his teeth, tearing into it with large, hungry bites.

"I will need your assistance to bring this to the table. One wrong tip of the corner of the platter and it could cause an unfortunate house fire." Hannibal took off his apron and tossed it into the sink behind Jack. "But first, everyone must come back to the table. This is a highly participatory dish, one that requires careful timing to make it truly spectacular. They will not want to miss it."

To say that Dr. Palanchuk had taken liberty with his study was an understatement. The entire room looked rearranged, his books on every level in disorder, his reading chair moved to accommodate several more that had found their way to the floor. But it was not rudeness that had put the books there, it was rapt, eager fascination, a genuine reverence for Hannibal's collection, so much so that Dr. Palanchuk couldn't possibly keep his greedy, happy hands off of the rows of soft leather. Not many people became this passionately excited about his books. In a way it was rather flattering.

However, all worship aside, he hoped Dr. Palanchuk hadn't displaced his copy of The Apocrypha.

What he did have in his hands, much to Hannibal's grave displeasure, was the copy of "A Concise Anatomical History Of The Pleistocene Era" that he had wrenched out from beneath a dead librarian.

Will flashed him a worried look, only to erase it with an easy smile, which concerned Hannibal all the more since this indicated he'd felt the need to change the mood of the small room. Hannibal took his cue and with gracious aplomb bid his guests to accompany him. "Please. Join me for dessert."

Callum Wilkes did not join them at the table and instead collapsed into one of Hannibal's reading chairs near the fireplace. It was a spot Hannibal himself enjoyed, usually in late evening, the dancing flames of the fire giving pause to a day's events and allowing his thoughts to drift into philosophical realms, most of which involved nightmarish visions of murder that he knew only Will Graham could relate to.

There was a psychic imprint of his own ruminations upon that chair if the brooding misery of Callum's slouched posture within it was any indication. His dark, hooded eyes stared into the flames as though they were having a private conversation. He still didn't know what had happened in the study, but it had changed Callum's mood to the point he was now quiet and unobtrusive. Perhaps he and Dr. Palanchuk had a tiff. No matter, if he was throwing his thoughts to flames at least the evening could now proceed without his repugnant influence.

But if they had argued, it was clearly over as Dr. Palanchuk, the book still in his grip, grabbed a chair from the dining table and placed it next to Callum's. The information he gleaned from it was for Alana, who stood beside him patiently, one hand on her hip and one absently toying with the thin silver necklace at her throat. She was only half listening, her eyes constantly straying to the dining table, the snoring image of Dr. Chilton not enough to taint the excitement of expectation.

"I remember when my grandmother found it. There's a picture somewhere, one of the men who worked at the plant with my father took it. I was a tiny child standing in the middle of its antlers, and I have never forgotten the feeling it gave me. Like it was like being in the embrace of a monster." Dr. Palanchuk read a quote from the text, his expression rapt. "'As the largest example of the Cervidae family, Cervales Latifrons is estimated to have weighed in at 2400 pounds. Imagine, Callum, having that kind of power attacking us. We would have been reduced to a can of devilled ham." He ignored Callum's pointed silence, as well as Alana's smooth exit towards the table, a sense of bemusement evident on her lips as she gave Hannibal a helpless shrug.

"It's strange my librarian did not get a hold of me. He is usually very punctual about this sort of thing."

Callum blinked at this, the flames at last losing their fascination. Hannibal listened in as he busied himself preparing the table for the large platter, his centrepiece given a careful placement on an empty side table.

"How is it he's *your* librarian? What, does he have your number in one of his index files, ready to seek out your approval the second something obscure dustily wanders onto his desk? Is he so enamoured by that which may interest you that he wakes in the middle of the night and thinks, 'Damn but I must immediately call Dr. Vasyl Palanchuk and let him know I've just received a book on the varieties of worms that infest apples. I can not sleep until he knows!' "

"Of course he does." Dr. Palanchuk began flipping through the various pages of the book, sabre toothed tigers and tusk laden woolly mammoths garnering only a passing interest. "Do you remember last Christmas?"

Callum visibly shuddered. "Why?"

"He called me from his mother's home in California just to inform me the book I had been seeking on the Holodomor genocide was being held for me."

"Ah yes, I remember. Nothing like famine and cannibalism to bring about the holiday spirit."

A plate smashed in the kitchen, and both men looked up in Hannibal's direction. The night was making Will far too nervous and the surprisingly close connection Dr. Palanchuk had with the tasty librarian was another unpleasant coincidence. Alana made a move to leave her chair to help, but Hannibal bid her to stay put. "It's nothing. Perhaps it would be best to see if you can wake Dr. Chilton. I believe he has overestimated his capacity for alcohol."

Hannibal picked up the now half empty vodka bottle with a calm restraint he most definitely did not want to have and placed it beside the centrepiece on the side table.

"A gift?" Alana had noticed the gold bow.

"A beloved token." He picked it up again with some affection, the now half empty bottle seeming to mock him. "Which has now become evidence that all that we cherish is tainted with impermanence."

Jack opened the door to the kitchen and leaned on it, his brow raised. "Are you ready, Doctor?"

Hannibal gave the dining room table a final, close inspection. "I am. Jack, if you would be so kind." He gestured to a chair beside Alana. "Will can help me."

"Are you sure?" Jack asked, glancing with concern back into the kitchen. "Will seems...Unwell. He dropped a plate, it hit the sink and..."

"I am sure." Hannibal pulled out the chair, pressing the point more than it needed to be made, but he knew he had to circumvent Jack's stubborn nature.

Hannibal entered the kitchen to find Will clutching the rim of the sink, his knuckles white and his arms trembling from the effort. "They know something," he harshly whispered. Will's voice shook, a bead of sweat dripping from the tip of his nose and into the sink where a bloodied plate lay in neat pieces. He'd cut his hand when he'd tried to pick them up, his palm now smearing red streaks onto the marble countertop.

Hannibal turned on the tap, warm water coursing out from it in a thick, aerated stream. He took Will's injured hand and ran it under the water, cleansing it of blood before using a fresh, white tea towel to bandage it. He kept his touch soft, hoping to evoke a sense of tenderness. "Panicking like this is unnecessary. Of course Dr. Palanchuk will have ties to me in some way, he is also an academic and uses the same reference sources."

Will spoke through clenched teeth. "The librarian had him on speed dial, I would say that's more than a passing connection. Not to mention how he found that book on your shelf in the first place." Will choked on his words, fear lining every syllable. "He just...He just *knew*. He claimed that something important would be revealed to him, out of thin air, and then there it was." Will hastily dug into his jeans pocket, heedless of the now red stained tea towel wrapped in a tourniquet around his palm. He pulled out a small, rectangular, and unfortunately familiar, piece of embossed plastic. "This ties you to the scene."

Hannibal remained impassive. "Then it will go missing."

"Alana already knows about it."

"The world is full of unfortunate coincidences, Will."

"You promised me you weren't going to do this. You promised me you wouldn't kill unless it was necessary. I can't even begin to imagine what crime a librarian could have done to you to deserve becoming steak on your plate."

Hannibal braced his shoulders, the memory injuring his composure. "He was highly dismissive of my interest in The Apocrypha. He called me a 'pseudo theological student of the worst kind'. I found that very rude."

Will's head shook as he captured Hannibal in his gaze, his mouth twisting into a sneering, trembling laugh. "Hannibal, there is something you desperately need to know."

He approached closer, so close Hannibal could smell the scent of him, his breath delicate and hot at his ear. He closed his eyes, drowning in the sensation that was Will's delightfully terrified body.

"He was right," Will whispered into his ear.

Dessert was a true triumph.

Through some force of miracle, or rather the gentle influence of Alana, both Callum Wilkes and Dr. Palanchuk had joined the table. Dr. Chilton was, still, completely immobilized by his earlier tryst with stolen vodka, his cheek glued to the table by a small trickle of drool. Ignoring his state seemed the best course of action, and judging from the cries of delight and heavy clapping from Jack and the rest of the assembled company, it was clear the flaming plates of crimson sweetness had made their expected impression.

The platter, Hannibal's own cubist rendition of the human cavity, was placed carefully on the centre of the dining table. The flames above the white bowls danced in blue wanton joy for such a fleeting amount of time, but it was enough to bring a crush of light to the table. Hannibal watched in proud fascination as the flame of each portion gradually sputtered its last effort, and died.

"A deceptively light dessert is always the perfect accompaniment to a heavy meal." He placed each bowl in front of his guests and Alana, ever the one to pounce on sweets, quickly gathered up her spoon and began to eat.

"Delightful," she moaned.

Spoons clicked eagerly into bowls and, as per usual, Hannibal paused over the fruity aroma that wafted upwards from his creation. He imagined drops of blood dripping from Will's injury into the thick, syrupy realm of red, dots of his essence a pleasurable accompaniment he would readily consume.

"My grandmother would make cherry preserves. Or at least, I think they were. She was not at all skilled at processing and the concept of sterilization was not a fine science to her, so I can not tell you if her preserves were any good. My mother strictly forbid us from eating them." Dr. Palanchuk, picked a cherry from the compote and made a move to eat it, only to place his spoon back onto his bowl. "I remember rows and rows of dusty, moldy bottles on shelves in her pantry. Most were so old it was impossible to know what she had originally put in them."

"Considering her history, I doubt you'd want to." Callum, for his part, was thoroughly enjoying dessert. His bowl was nearly empty already, his spoon eagerly scraping every last bit from the ceramic. "Butchering a goat with three heads and six legs, and picking out the tumours with a penknife-hardly an experience of good old fashioned home cooking most people have."

"As usual, you exaggerate." Dr. Palanchuk finally downed a spoonful of compote, and to Hannibal's amusement he closed his eyes in sweetened pleasure. They were still closed when he said, "It had two heads."

Dr. Palanchuk certainly knew how to command a room, even if he didn't do it on purpose. Hannibal rescued the moment from its sudden, awkward trajectory. "I am very sorry, Dr. Palanchuk, but as a host I have committed an unforgivable sin. I have given you dessert when you are no doubt still hungry for a proper meal. I do hope you have my forgiveness."

"There is nothing to forgive, Dr. Lector," Palanchuk happily replied, his grin positively radiant. "Which of course, reminds me..."

Then, to the shock of everyone assembled at the table, Dr. Palanchuk took the sleeping dormouse Chilton's bowl of coolled cherry compote and, without hesitation, dumped its contents into the side pocket of Chiltion's suit jacket.

He set the empty bowl carefully back onto the table.

No one said a word.

As everyone finished dessert, Hannibal found himself hesitating to gather up the empty plates, a growing fascination at this study of contrasts turning, as it often did, into a pathological curiousity he couldn't prevent himself from exploring. "A good conversation begins with the proper setting, and while a dining room is a place for great joy for the senses, its formality can often stifle the best of discourse. Leave the plates, we shall gather in the drawing room for cocktails and set aside the stranglehold of proper eitquette."

"Without descending into rudeness, of course." Will pushed his untouched plate aside with stubborn petulance.

Hannibal finished the heel of his glass of wine, and smiled over how the bitterness mingled so well with the sweet. His narrowed eyes flashed with cold, metallic brilliance at Will.

"That goes without saying."


	6. Chapter 6

CERVALCES LATIFRONS

vi.

Callum was not about to give up a warm spot by the fire to be forced into 'interesting conversation' with a group of strangers who measured everything he did against the Wilson Winter case. Ancient history, as far as Callum was concerned, and not one he wanted to discuss. The only member of the group he'd managed to have a connection with was now snoring and passed out at the dining room table with a pocketful of red syrup. It dripped out of the seams of his pocket and formed a small puddle on the grey floorboards.

"Was that necessary?"

"It was."

"Another one of your 'compulsions' where you say the universe made you do it."

"Something like that."

Vasyl stood at the fireplace mantle, his face illuminated by the brighter flames that danced high above the logs. With a soft smile playing at his lips, he gave off an air of mischievous pride. This did not in any way suggest even the smallest glimmer of evil within him, however, for as Callum knew, Vasyl was a man who truly believed that the workings of the universe were meant to destroy with positive purpose in mind. If that meant ruining a fellow psychiatrist's suit, then so be it. Callum stared up Vasyl, watching as the light from the fireside seemed to transform his face into the profile of a delighted, clueless angel.

"Let's just call a cab and leave."

"Why on earth would we do that? I haven't even had a chance to talk to Dr. Lector about my paper, and that was the whole reason we were invited."

"You were invited here, not me. As for the paper, I don't think it had anything to do with why we we're stuck at a dinner party that's left you hungry. You know, in bad light, you kind of look like him. From what I've heard from our dear, dead drunk Frederick, that may be a very dangerous likeness."

Vasyl was instantly offended. "Don't be ridiculous, I don't wear plaids." He fussed with a button on his stained shirt. "He's a good head taller than me. We're nothing alike."

"If he went and mangled up your body good enough you'd pass."

"What a morbid thing to say! Dr. Lector is nnnot going to mangle me!"

Callum slouched so far into the winged back chair his shoulders were nearly level with the armrests. He stared up at his beautiful, innocent psychiatrist lover and friend with an overwhelming feeling of tired exasperation. "We are stuck in one of your patterns and you and I both know what that means."

"The fractal machination of the universe will move into directions we can follow..."

"Someone's dead." Callum crossed his arms over his stomach, his depressed gaze never leaving Vasyl's saintly smile. "It's what it always means."

Vasyl's smile faltered slightly, and for this Callum felt a pang of guilt. "Yes, but..."

"Do we dare connect the dots, my lovely?"

"I'm not sure..."

Like a creeping insect, Will Graham approached from the periphery of the conversation, his nervous form casting tentacles into their circle of two with prodding question. Callum couldn't help but dislike the man, especially as he himself was hardwired to be suspicious of those who professed to instinctively know what was in his heart and head. Will Graham had not walked one foot in any of his mind corridors yet, and Callum hoped, for the sake of the man's sanity and his own, that he would stay off of that particular body strewn route.

"Connect the dots to what?" He gave them a disingenuous smile as he gestured to Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom, who were now in the drawing room, engaging in an in depth philosophical argument with Dr. Lector, who seemed to already have all the wisest answers. Callum was not a fan of Vasyl's peer, either. A manipulated discussion is no discussion at all.

"I'm not partial to mixed company myself," Will admitted, and Callum could sense he was telling the truth about this at least. "What I'm interested in, Dr. Palanchuk, is your 'amazing powers of perception', a club in which I am also a very unwilling participant. We seem to have more in common than most people, and I wouldn't mind a few more demonstrations of your so called fractal dot connecting. I'm sorry if I seemed a bit dismissive back there in the study, I'm just so used to doubters myself. Maybe what you do can help me in a case I'm currently involved in."

"Actually, Mr. Graham, I was hoping to call on *your* abilities."

Will Graham was taken aback by this, and his head shook slightly as he frowned over Vasyl's request. "I don't see how I could help you. There's...There's no crime here..."

"The moose," Vasyl said. "Or rather, the murdered calf. It's been bothering me all evening, the purpose of why someone would do such a thing to an innocent animal, an infant one at that. The cut was clean, straight across the throat, a quick bleed out so it would not suffer." Vasyl was visibly upset by the memory, and Callum fleetingly touched his arm, a spark jumping across his fingertips. He hated when Vasyl was like this, his emotions slowly slipping towards the surface as each little piece began to click and slide into a living horror that he would be forced to understand.

This was the difference between them, Callum knew, for while Will felt the need to see all the twisted misery of the killers whose minds he wandered around in, Vasyl was compelled to tie together the ever entwining lines of circumstance and outside influence that created the nightmare in the first place. He wasn't sure what was worse-the knowledge people did very bad things, or the clear understanding of how it could have been prevented. Both were near impossible to live with.

"Killing an animal is hardly the same thing as killing a human being."

"How so?" Vasyl was struck by Will's suggestion, his hand instinctively going to his heart. "Killing without purpose is murder, whether it is committed by something with two legs or four."

"I wouldn't say that's entirely true." Will's irritation at Dr. Palanchuk's assessment made Callum's distrust resurface. "In the Minnesota Shrike case, Garet Jacob Hobbs killed with a purpose in mind. He wanted to honour the women he murdered..."

"He did no such thing and that was not his purpose. I am familiar with the case, Mr. Graham. Hobbs killed because he gave himself the excuse of exaltation. What he truly longed for was control, for power."

"That isn't true, he wanted them to be put on a pedestal, like his daughter..."

"His daughter was leaving home and his life was descending into what he believed was chaos in her absence. But he did more than this, he killed those girls so they would be a mirror of her, so she could have a reflection of death in her image. Putting her in his artful drama and making her the star, there is a vain power to that. He was training her to be a hunter, Mr. Graham. He was doing all he could to draw out a monster he had long shaped within her from the day she was born. He did not want to relinquish control of his legacy. The world outside of his ordered influence is rife with chaos and he did not want her to embrace it. She was only allowed to be in his power."

Will Graham's mouth twitched. "I know some who would believe the order he imposed was a sign of love."

"What room is there for the turmoil of love when there is only control? We live on a revolving ball of destruction and weaving through it, like a chaotic vein that defies reason, that is what we call love. Order and control are merely illusions. We are forever at their mercy if we put our beliefs in them."

Will's hands were deep in his pockets, his expression grim. He looked up at Vasyl with tired apathy. "A dead moose. You want me to connect empathically with not just an animal, but a dead moose. You want me to see what a dead moose saw."

"Yes, it would be much appreciated."

"You're insane."

"As are we all from time to time."

"All I can give you are impressions." Will shrugged. "My imagination is my greatest tool in my work for the FBI, but getting into the mind of a dead animal may be beyond my limits." He closed his eyes, and Callum watched him as he seemed descend into a realm of intense concentration. His breathing gradually slowed. Eyes rapidly moving beneath closed lids, an encroaching dream...

A meditative state.

This did attract Callum's interest. This was something he understood.

"It's dusk, the sun is just setting on the horizon. There is no fear here, not in the rustle of the leaves or the encroaching darkness. It's too young to understand danger. Just a few days old, it's stumbling through the roots and leaves on the ground, still awkward on its footing. Its mother is nearby, keeping watch so he'll have to be careful..."

Will's breath caught, and he blinked his eyes open, stunned to believe he was still in the room.

"The calf?" Vasyl prodded.

"The killer," Will said, shaking his head. "I couldn't...I can only see through the killer's eyes."

A rather single minded imagination, Callum thought.

"He slit the calf's throat, he was quick about it, he made sure he got out of there fast before the mother could see him. He wanted...He wanted to test himself. He didn't want to kill it, he thought it was beautiful, and it was a waste, but...He had to know he had it in him. He loves nature, he respects it, and murdering the calf was like murdering something he loved. It gave him no sense of pleasure. He wanted to know that he could do it. That when and if the time came, he had the ability to slit the throat of someone he deeply cherished."

"Why would he do that?" Vasyl asked.

Will Graham was a fragile man, Callum realized. The weight of every moment in Dr. Lector's house and amongst all of these people was draining every ounce of energy from him. He didn't want to be aloof because he was arrogant, he wanted to be alone because it was comforting. Callum wondered how often that need was misinterpreted.

"He needed to be able to do it because the possibility is inevitable."

"How very sad that he believes in that lie."

In blinking confusion Will stood by the fire, a broken man in every way who was doing all he could to keep his pieces in careful check. His confidence, when he had it, was false. Callum had worked narcotics long enough to know the toll some people's personal hell took on others and he had to wonder...Who was it that had pulled Will Graham under?

A malignant influence could keep anyone unbalanced. It seemed Will Graham was keeping bad company.

"You wanted to know." Will frowned, his hands leaving the pockets of his jeans to rest at his waist, a hesitation to his stance that was almost accusatory. "Tell me, what else can he do? You say you pull the answers out of the air, well pluck a string for me, Dr. Palanchuk. How does this killer stop himself from this path of destruction?"

Vasyl's face took on a saddened shadow as the fire began to descend into glowing hot embers. "He dies first."

Without permission, Vasyl pulled a quilted occasional chair from near the entrance of the corridor leading to the back of the house and faced it in front of Callum. Will had wandered off into the drawing room where laughter and conversation had continued, with Dr. Lector pointedly doing all he could to ignore his more challenging guests.

"Your mind is like a Spyrograph. I imagine the patterns are closing in so tight you can barely see it through the ink."

"Dr. Lector killed the moose."

"Careful now, just because you can get along with Will Graham better than his ice queen boyfriend doesn't mean he's innocent."

"Dr. Lector was a surgeon. For it to be done by hand as quickly as it was takes a level of confidence and skill the average hunter does not have. I am becoming very uncomfortable here, Callum. There is a much more dramatic play happening beneath this performance." Vasyl turned his head towards Jack Crawford's booming laughter. "Can you feel it, Callum? The air is pure static. The moose, the meat, the book-all interconnected into a pattern is that is almost, but not entirely, clear."

Callum knew better than to add anything further, he would allow Vasyl time to chart through the back alleys and side streets his mind so carelessly wandered into. He would eventually find what Callum already instinctively knew.

"I think something terrible has happened to my librarian."

Brooding thoughts of murder were interrupted. For while the rest of the guests were busy mingling, Dr. Chilton was slowly waking up at the dining room table. With blurry disorientation he gave his surroundings a dazed once over and then, as he pushed his seat back to get up, he noticed the large, red stain erupting like an opened poppy all along his left side.

The dining room erupted into blood curdling screams.

His side a gory stain of red, Dr. Frederick Chilton staggered towards the front drawing room, his face a twisted mask of tortuous agony. He screamed again, his fingers digging deep into his side, wet globs of round cherries slipping in wet plops onto the floor as he tried to walk. "No! Not again! NO!"

Jack Crawford stared at him blankly. "Uh...Fred..."

"He's murdered me! Oh my God, Jack, do something, I've been murdered! My last kidney! He took my last one!"

"Fred..."

"I'm dying you goddamned son of a bitch!" Dr. Chilton collapsed onto the floor and began rolling back and forth, his gasping punctuated by horrified screams that pierced Callum's ears. "I'm dying. My last one. He just had to take the last one...Greedy bastard jackass. I only had one left. I won't last long. Not long..."

He coughed and gasped as he lay on the floor of Dr. Lector's home, the assembly of guests impassively watching his spectacle.

"What the hell is wrong with you people! Oh my God are you *all* in on it?" Chilton frantically looked from one face to the next, each one staring down at him in what seemed, no doubt to him, as though he was one last morsel ready to be snatched up.

"Joining in for some Chilton pot pie, you bastards!"

Alana furiously glared down at him. "For God's sake, Fred, pull it together. What the hell are you talking about?"

"Sonofabitchmykidney..."

Another shadow joined the group, and this one was long, and lean, slightly paler than the rest and possessed of an easy calm that only served to terrify Chilton more. Vasyl crouched close to the man, who was by now clutched so fiercely by the grip of horror he could only watch in panting silence as Vasyl dipped his fingers into Chilton's pocket. He drew them out, dripping red, with clumps of fruit clinging in burgundy knots within the syrup. Vasyl made sure Dr. Frederick Chilton had a good view as he slid his fingers past his lips, and licked them clean with sultry abandon.

Chilton let out a new roof raising scream and managed to scramble on all fours towards the front door. He wrenched it open before Jack could stop him and staggered into an uneven run into the rain slicked night.

"For fuck's sake, the idiot's going to get lost in the woods." Jack slid on his jacket with grave impatience. "I'll tackle and take Dr. Chilton home." He shoved on his fedora and shivered in the chill wind that crept into the house through the open door. "Thank you for inviting me, Dr. Lector. It's been...Well, it's been a night."

Alana followed behind him, her coat draped over her arm.

"Alana? Are you sure you won't stay?"

She turned on her heel and gave Hannibal a mild curtsey. "I've had enough drama for one evening, thanks, I'm heading home with Jack. Food was great. Dessert was great. Yeah. Great." She gave a wave to the two strangers still huddled close at the fire and Callum weakly waved back. "It was nice meeting you Dr. Palanchuk. Nice. Yes, I think that's the word I'm supposed to use."

Then, with all pretence of pleasantry over with, the front door slammed shut, leaving Hannibal's house in a claustrophobic aftermath of quiet. It was still raining, enough to make the place float like an ark, in Callum's estimation. "We need to call a taxi. Or borrow a rowboat."

Headlights from Jack Crawford's car lit up the front windows before retreating into the darkness, leaving behind the sobering thought that they were now truly isolated with their host. Callum's worry was edging its way towards panic. He had no doubt whatsoever Vasyl and himself were now trapped alone in a house full of murderers.

As if on cue, Will Graham slid out of the shadows of the drawing room like a shivering little rat spider, his demeanour significantly less fragile. Dislike had done its fatal segue into hatred. With a quick mental calculation of his surroundings, Callum began an escape route. Graham gets a poker to the eye, Dr. Lector a shot to the temple from the pistol hidden in one of the many pockets of his leather trench coat. He'd been in worse scenarios in his dealings on the lower half of the East End. Escaping from this was as straight a line as one could get.

Or it should have been. But then there was Vasyl, and Vasyl was always a problem when one tried to make predictions and control how a situation was about to play out. He would move an object that would get suddenly get in the way later, he would open a window that would allow in a hurricane. Always, some unpredictable crack of circumstance that he was casually responsible for that ultimately became a weapon of destruction.

Like now, that sound, eking out of the front drawing room as Dr. Hannibal Lector stared at the smears of red syrup spread all over his floor like bloodied death angels. A sound that gave Will Graham's growing dark malevolence pause, and forced him to turn around to find the source.

It grew as the seconds stretched, a strange, alien sound that choked and sputtered and wheezed, wholly unsure of the shape it was supposed to take. Then, finally, in a captured moment when Dr. Lector lifted his head and saw Will Graham's stricken face, it was then that it happened.

The sound became familiar and it was coming from Dr. Hannibal Lector.

Not a restrained, refined sound that had notes of derision lurking within it, not the usual false smile that hid a layer of contempt. No, this was a loud, raucous, uncontrollable, tear inducing series of guffaws. And it truly would have been infectious, Callum thought, if Will Graham wasn't rooted to the floorboards like he was, shivering in outright terror.

"Are you...Are you *laughing*?" Will winced.

Hannibal could barely get the words out. He pointed at the front door, tears of mirth marring his sight. "He ran like a shot rabbit!"

"Hannibal, it's...It's been a long night..." Will Graham eyed the front door in what now appeared to be longing. "I should go..."

"It has been an incredible evening, Will!" Hannibal suddenly exclaimed, and without hesitation herded him back into the depths of the house towards the fire, all thought of escape quashed. "Dr. Palanchuk, I have grossly underestimated you in every way and for that I am truly sorry. My dinner was ruined, my guests were ill behaved, my study is in a shambles. Yet you have remained blameless and I am in now in the position of requesting your forgiveness twice in one evening. The rarity of this is not lost to me."

"There is no need for forgiveness..."

Hannibal practically pounced onto the bottle of vodka at the side table and paired up the two used shot glasses with another set. He poured, far more messily than was his usual habit, and distributed them to his guests with uncharacteristically careless glee.

"You will all spend the night!" It was an order, not a request. Dr. Hannibal Lector held up his shot glass and bid everyone to join in. "Za vstrechu!"


	7. Chapter 7

CERVALCES LATIFRONS

vii.

Hannibal was a man who could appreciate a surprise. With his clear intelligence and his vast knowledge that could fill more than one university, let alone a single library, there was not much left in the world that provided a sense of wonder. Art, yes, could be appreciated because one could always find a meaning that one missed, a shading of light that took on metaphoric significance or a hue of colour that seen at a different angle reinvented the entire piece. Music evoked a variety of emotions. But in ordinary people, they were as Callum had earlier described them, dish soap buying morons, rarely having the capacity to engage in conversations that didn't devolve into simplistic platitudes.

He had found something unique in Will Graham because he possessed that rarest of gifts-understanding. Banal as it was, and Hannibal was annoyed with himself for it, it seemed he was not immune in that need for human camaraderie. The facts were, if he was ugly about it, he was so in need of that connection there were times he imagined himself crawling inside of Will directly, diving from a kiss deep inside of his mouth, his arms and shoulders devoured, his legs and then feet, Will's skin stretched and reshaped. He would melt into him until they were one entity, Will's skin sliding like a glove atop of his own.

Such a joining would be a beautiful symbiosis.

Though he had no wish to have such closeness with either Dr. Palanchuk nor his miserable companion Mr. Wilkes, he did appreciate the glittering layer of fascination they had added to his evening. His interest in them had begun as a purely physical, practical one, the usefulness of their likeness to Will and himself a measure of security should his crimes be exposed and the need to disappear become necessary. Yet as the night wore on, it became clear that there was something strange connected to Dr. Vasyl Palanchuk, an unconscious, random endless energy that was crammed into the confines of his graceful body. It poured out of him like the fallout from a nuclear blast, adding touches of destruction upon every moment. It had sent Dr. Chilton running for his life into the pouring rain.

The image still made Hannibal chuckle.

Now plied with red wine, Dr. Palanchuk's voice drawled with tipsy cadence across the fireplace. "To say that multiple murder is more interesting is a gruesome assessment and not one I agree with. My dear, Mr. Graham, such crimes are rarely the result of a person driven to their limits. They are of the realm of the sociopath, who is calculated and controlled, trapped within the confines of his narrow viewpoint."

"You aren't a big fan of being in control, are you?" William sipped at a fresh glass of wine, offering Dr. Palanchuk his attention, but Hannibal saw the small glances darting in his direction.

"Control is limiting." Hannibal's inner darkness smarted at Dr. Palanchuk's words, and though he found the man entertaining, his ignorant choice of topic left much to be desired. His heavy accent lay thick in the dim light of Hannibal's drawing room, both soft and commanding.

"A singular murderer has endless possibilities surrounding the reasons for their act and unlike the serial murderer can spend an entire lifetime shaped by it. Guilt can reform and destroy at will. Penance may be self imposed. Perhaps the person murdered was that purest of monsters and his or her death an inevitable relief for humanity."

"So you are saying one can be justified in murdering someone, just as long as that person is evil?" Will scoffed at this. "I can assure you, killing a man, even a bad one, is not easy..."

"Yes, your unfortunate killing of Garet Jacob Hobbs. Justification is a highly personal belief, and your reaction to his death only exemplifies the variety of this experience. There are many shapes and twists that homicide can take, but once it falls into the realm of a pattern, as you yourself investigate, it no longer holds a personal connection to the murderer. It becomes something clinical, as easily indexed as a recipe."

"If he has no personal connection, then what's the lure?" Will Graham paced the dining room in nervous exhaustion, a self comforting act Hannibal found irritating and wished he would stop. It had all the hallmarks of a concerned predator trapped in a cage while meat lay in wait in a bucket just outside of it.

Was this empathy? Will was walking to and fro against the bars of his mental entrapment in an inner madness that could only focus on its immediate surroundings in an effort to calm its anticipatory need for blood. Hannibal could feel Will's nervous glances constantly seeking him out, wondering just when he was going to pounce and finally allow him to join in on the feast.

"The lure is a memory."

Hannibal mentally paused at this, his eyes narrowing as he brought Dr. Vasyl Palanchuk into a more careful focus. The vodka, the bottle now finished, had slightly dimmed his usually acute senses, and he could feel that its effects were slowly winding through his body, both warming and relaxing him to the threatening point of drunkenness. It was no doubt this that made Dr. Palanchuk seem like a perfect mirror of what could have been and filled Hannibal with an incomprehensible sense of longing. Graceful, fiercely intelligent, easy to like. A man who fully embraced light instead of darkness and, shockingly, found it just as complex.

"A serial murderer is not unlike a drug addict," Palanchuk continued. "There is always a catalyst, that act which first propelled him into the black cavern that ensnares his soul. The first murder, whether on purpose or by accident, becomes the base upon which all others are measured and are, invariably, found lacking."

"The trap of every needle strewn twat," Callum gravely agreed, his inebriated voice a harsh, gravel cockney that had at last staggered into conversation. "Always chasing that first high."

"Yes, just like your first experience with methamphetamines," Palanchuk cheerfully added.

"Vasyl...My first experience with meth left me nibbling on a rotted corpse, it is hardly a good example for the point you are trying to make. I have been trying for the past three years to forget, not dwell, on that more than traumatic memory." Callum sat up in his chair, his trench coat pooled around him like the cloak of a mediaeval assassin. "You would think as my psychiatrist you would have figured that out by now."

"You are a man of extremes, Callum, that is all I am suggesting."

"You think I desired that kind of upset in my life? You think I'm chasing after that? For fuck's sake, Vasyl, shake your head, we moved to another country to get the hell away from it, what kind of pursuit are you thinking I'm after here?"

"You are still working in law enforcement, still working narcotics." Vasyl pouted, his stature elongated as he stood with pride. "Leaving a country under duress is often of necessity, not a true indication of a need to change one's habits."

"I am not in the habit of sitting on corpses!"

"No, but you are still in the habit of finding them."

The banter between them continued, and Hannibal found himself only half listening, his attention shrouded in the near darkness of his dining room as he watched them from his position at the head of the table. Palanchuk's derisive pout eased into a grin by some pointed comment of Callum Wilkes, a growing push and pull of teasing and mock fury that was gradually strolling towards an easy intimacy that would be considered, in Alana Bloom's simplistic language, 'sweet'.

In the near darkness, Will Graham left the fire to stand behind Hannibal, his hand on the rung of his chair, knuckles grazing between his strong shoulder blades as his grip tightened. "I think I might have this figured out," Will said, his voice low so only Hannibal would hear. "You want to impress on me that they could be us."

The tiniest of smiles crept across Hannibal's stony expression. "Perhaps one day they will be."

Will dared to place a hand on Hannibal's shoulder, knowing full well the tense pleasure of his touch was enough to put his body on needful alert. "Do you honestly think those cheerful twins of ours are our inevitable destiny?" He pulled his hand away and Hannibal felt its absence like a cold amputation. "We can never be that happy. They are something you and I are not."

"And that is?"

Will dared to place his hand upon Hannibal's shoulder again, and this time, contrary to the ice he wanted to project, Hannibal's body led out an audible sigh at the contact.

"Playful," Will said.

"I do not believe that to be correct." Hannibal grabbed Will's hand, refusing to allow it to leave him just yet. He pressed hard on it, pushing it down against his shoulder, hoping Will could feel the tense muscle and bone beneath his grip. "Does not the fact they are here denote a sense of amusement on my part? Do not judge me so harshly, Will. If we are unable to have the same happiness it is because you are most at ease when you are miserable."

"That is only because I have wandered in your soul and you have trapped me in your darkness." Will wrenched his hand free and collapsed into a chair beside Hannibal. He stretched out his arms and flexed his fingers before weaving them together as though in prayer. "Just like you and I, they are a universe of two. I know you are looking at Dr. Palanchuk the way I am looking at Callum Wilkes, that they are who we could have been before the circumstances of the world took us over. You would be that happy, so at ease in your skin and so open and giving, filled with a curiosity that held no hint of self service..."

"And you would be a drunken louse, harbouring black thoughts that are merely tempered by my presence. I am not seeing the differences you are, Will."

"He surrendered himself to Dr. Palanchuk's influence and has become a better man for it." Will's knuckles were bone white in the near dark, his fingers pressed so tight together it was as though he was strangling an invisible foe. "I have not."

"You think I am wrong for you." Hannibal's expression was taut, his black eyes glinting as they took in the contours of Vasyl's relaxed grace which lit across Vasyl's contented brow, a flawlessness that shone through without effort, without control. "So shall he now be called Gabriel?" Hannibal turned towards Will, seeking his angry understanding through the dark. "Is my name Lucifer?"

Sensing Hannibal's displeasure, Will's body began to relax. He unclasped his hands and dared to slide a finger along Hannibal's wrist, the touch searing him with a bloodthirsty want that made Hannibal hold his breath. How glorious it would be, to cut a slit in his own flesh and offer up his wound to Will, to watch as he passionately suckled it.

Will's finger tapped at the face of Hannibal's Rolex watch, a reminder of the insanely late, or early, hour. Two in the morning. A place in time where conversation was meant to end in the snoring satisfaction of lovers.

"He's astonishingly beautiful," Will said, meaning Dr. Vasyl Palanchuk. Instinctively, Hannibal's hands curled into fists, a jealousy he didn't know he was harbouring suddenly overtaking him. Will's low chuckle suggested he knew exactly the sort of reaction this would give him, and Hannibal instantly resented it. "Don't worry. He is not for me. If I were capable of staying in his light and walking behind it without going blind, I would do it. I would be irresistibly attracted to him. But his shine, no matter how lovely, is not what I'm after. I've learned I am far more comfortable in ill lit corners." Will frowned, a pained expression painting dark outlines upon him in the shadows. "I've tried to empathize with him. See the world as he sees it."

Hannibal's jealousy reared again, a clenching, twisting anger that tore at his heart just a little, just enough to want to see that smiling grin of Dr. Palanchuk's be cut off with a pair of scissors.

"Dr. Palanchuk's mind is a kaleidoscope, he's all bright lights pointing in directions I can't follow. Being in there, in his perspective...My eyes feel like they've been slit with a paring knife." Will shook his head, his words carefully chosen with insecure reverence. "He puts things out of balance. I don't know how, but it's like, he's your perfect opposite. I get the feeling he's dangerous because of this. He's your paradox. Cancelling him out will destroy you."

Hannibal sardonically smiled at this. "So I shall be smote by the very will of Heaven should I choose to harm him." He fought the urge to laugh. "It has yet to interfere with my work."

Will's tone remained serious. "You should never have invited him here."

The fire had burned low, white embers now cooling into ash as the night finally decided to capture its revellers and lull them into its muffling embrace. Callum Wilkes lay spread out in the chair before the fire, his heels dug into the floorboards and propping his body within it through some as yet uncalculated law of physics. Vasyl sat cross legged in Hannibal's prized green velvet occasional chair, the book on Pleistocene mammals still holding an unnatural amount of attention.

"You said your grandmother found a set of antlers of one of those of creatures on her farm." Hannibal, though tired, couldn't help his curiosity over why such a meaningless thing held such significance for Dr. Palanchuk. "Where is it you said you were from?"

"I am from the Ukraine," Dr. Palanchuk said. Then, without looking up from the book. "I was born in Prypiat."

"Prypiat. That is near Chernobyl."

"A connecting city, actually. My father was a nuclear physicist who worked at the plant." Palanchuk happened to look up from his book to find both Will and Hannibal studying him just as carefully. "There is no need to look at me like that. I had a very happy childhood there."

"Were you..."

"My family was present when the disaster hit, yes," Palanchuk's demeanour was still eerily cheerful. "My father was close enough to obtain severe radiation poisoning. He died two weeks later."

He flipped a page in the large book in his lap, intense black and white ink drawn illustrations of alien bones absorbing the last of the firelight. "Afterwards, we lived on my grandmother's farm for a while. It was illegal, of course, because the farm was in the exclusion zone, but at that point my mother just wanted us all out of Ukraine and began to make plans to leave for England, where she had a cousin. It didn't happen right away, we were on the farm two years, dodging the attention of the militsiya and hoping the snipers didn't find us.

In the end, they just conceded to my grandmother's stubbornness and left her alone. If she wanted to die on a radiation soaked wasteland so be it."

Slender fingers slid down the page, pointing out words that corresponded with bones. "It was still a good life. It was great fun living on a farm as a boy. I was twelve, and up until then I had lived a very sanitized, city existence, in good schools and never hungry. The feel of dirt in my hands as my grandmother and I tilled it together is a memory I often return to."

Dr. Palanchuk closed his eyes, the very thought bringing his face into an expression of such rapt happiness Hannibal could sense Will Graham holding his breath as he stared at him. Hannibal did not fault Will, for he understood he saw what Hannibal saw in the near dark. Hannibal's likeness etched onto Dr. Palanchuk's, his face radiating a calm serenity that could only otherwise be found on Hannibal's death mask. Though he was not afraid of facing his own demise, to see it so plainly laid out before him was unsettling. A man was not meant to attend his own funeral, even if Hannibal was tempted to explore the artful display of his own corpse.

"I hardly think dodging snipers and living in a dead zone of radiation poisoning is a memory I would cherish." With Palanchuk still shrouded in light while both himself and Will were hunched in the shadows of the dining room, the conversation took on the appearance of an interrogation.

Palanchuk was oblivious to this, his voice still wistful in the dark. "My grandmother is a formidable woman, was always encouraging in a harsh but loving way. You must understand, she lived through the horrors of Holodomor, a bit of Armageddon was not going to deter her from remaining at her home." Dr. Palanchuk's eyes opened at this, a smile still present upon his lips. "As a child she was especially vulnerable. She remembers her mother hiding her in a cupboard, and standing watch at her door with a machete, ready to fight off any rival villagers who would raid people's homes. It is a strange thing to know that when a population is starving all taboos are destroyed. You must understand, people went mad with hunger. Children became an especially easy delicacy.

She told me stories of her youth the way some would talk of fairy tales. Gruesome, terrifying and full of murder. It was no doubt this combined with the various deformities and tumorous carcasses of her butchered farm animals that created my phobia of meat. She would sometimes hold up a leg of lamb and say it weighed about the same as a baby. I think you can understand that knowing where my phobia came from does little to aid my plight."

"We are forever at the mercy of our histories," Hannibal grimly agreed. "Do you still have family left?"

"No. My siblings started dying of thyroid cancer within the year. Twin sisters and an older brother. My mother could not bear the loss and took her own life. She had always been fragile, but who would not be tempted by the comfort of the grave when confronted by the constant assault of death?

My grandmother and I were the last ones left at the end. She is alive still. How strange it all is, when you see who is left to pick up all the threads. You see, it was my older brother who was enamoured with physics. I had barely a passing interest."

He closed the book carefully and turned towards them, his profile oddly coquettish in the near dark that had engulfed the dining room. Callum's messily spread body was sleeping at an uncomfortable angle in the chair, his knuckles pressed against the floorboards, a nasty, wet wheezing gurgling forcing its way through his lungs.

"It was Chernobyl that brought it all into clarity for me, to be able to pay attention, to see and calculate and ruminate upon the various what ifs and random possibilities and how they form from a near incomprehensible chaos into what we understand to be our universe. You are not far from my age, Dr. Lector, and I know you remember it. The entire world held its breath, wondering if it was the end."

Hannibal had no such recollection, the incident had been a mere footnote in his life's education and it still held no fascination. It was an omission he now regretted, because as Dr. Palanchuk spoke it felt, to Hannibal, as though the universe was staring at his artful efforts at godliness with a patient, divine reproach.

"It's the end of the world as I know it. Are we sleeping in chairs tonight?" Callum's cockney snarled across the now dead fireplace, the grey ashes a cold offering that ended all conversation.

"There is a guest room, down the hall and to the right," Hannibal said, not getting up, himself content to be enveloped in the night. "There is one bed, which I assume will be adequate."

"We're not the platonic duo, if that's what you mean," Callum replied. He stretched and cursed over the kinks that had settled into his neck, joints cracking as he dared to get up. "I'm hungover, exhausted and I'm sure I've caught pneumonia from that death march here. The only creaking that mattress is going to get is my bones when they settle on it."

"You are being overly dramatic. It's no one's fault but your own for keeping on that damp leather coat for most of the night. I told you not to wear it."

"You have no concept at all of fashion, do you?" An annoyed Callum straightened his posture, the drape of his trench coat still hanging with messy inelegance on his frame. "You, with your missing buttons and ruined suit jacket. I was stomped on by a moose and I'm still the sexiest thing in this room."

"You smell like charcoal and vodka."

"See? Still sexy."

The banter continued as they made their way down the hall, and Hannibal was glad to see them go, though he would have preferred for Dr. Palanchuk to leave behind the book he had formed such a possessive attachment with. It had followed with him, tucked unceremoniously under his arm, an indication that he was to continue his possibly fatal exploration of ancient moose, librarians and cannibalistic grandmothers and how it came together upon Hannibal's dining room table.

Movement beside him brought his senses into bleary understanding. Will Graham was making an attempt to escape, his jacket plucked from where he'd tossed it onto an antique chair in the drawing room. He didn't leave, Hannibal was happy to note, though he did slide on the jacket, its rumpled state a sharp contrast to the stylish dress shirt he wore beneath it.

Once he left, Hannibal would be alone. It was a prospect that angered him, for all of his senses and intellect wanted to pull Will back into his realm and make him surrender to the constant pulse of blood that was now the mainstay of his imagination. It was rude that he should leave just as the various hints and suggestions were teasing into a precious conclusion. He had orchestrated it all so carefully, had planned and organized and moved the pieces within Will's mind until he had found a spot to remain inside of it, a resting place for his darkness to fall upon. But though the result was what he wanted, Hannibal couldn't help but understand that there was something still lacking, something he could not put under his control and bring into his power. It was this that was the constant, painful nag that wouldn't leave his heart and would leave the night filled with a hollow longing that felt as lonely as death itself.

It was because of this that he took a page from Dr. Palanchuk's messily structured theories and, descending fully into the electricity of the man's chaos, Hannibal turned to Will and said, "Come to bed with me."

He earned stone silence as an answer. But Will did not leave.

Hannibal got out of the chair, his steps long and graceful as he headed towards the stairs that led up to his bedroom. He slid his jacket off of his shoulders as he journeyed upwards. He could feel Will's eyes on him as he followed behind at a tense distance, his steps light and unsure on the stairs as they creaked under his weight. Hannibal did not look back. There was no need. He had taken an uncharacteristic, highly uncalculated risk and the result was a hefty victory. He could feel a predatory pride swell within him, making his mouth dry in anticipation. The night was young yet.


	8. Chapter 8

CERVALCES LATIFRONS

viii.

What a joke, everyone thought he was tired.

Callum Wilkes instantly flashed into wakeful brightness the minute he and Vasyl found themselves in the lavish guestroom. He took a few moments to pause and take in the gorgeous four poster bed and its purple silk coverlets, no doubt with deep maroon matching sheets that would slip across naked flesh with sensual ease. He had a flash of erotic genius as he braced his palm on one of the tall pillars that stood like oak guardians at the corners of the bed, his hand stroking it instinctively. He licked his lips and imagined Vasyl's panting face pressed against the carved scrollwork on its surface while Callum did things to him that made Vasyl forget how to say his name in five different languages.

"Thank God, a bed. I am, as you say, knockered."

"Knackered and I'm not and you aren't either."

Vasyl wasn't about to be ordered around so easily, and he collapsed at the edge of the bed, his moose bruised body sore and his eyes hooded in the primal need for sleep. Callum groaned and forced him to stand up, feeling a very small shred of guilt at the fact that he was used to seventy two hour stake outs and survival fuelled adrenaline. Lack of sleep was one of the main components of Callum's job and he took a great deal of pride in how competent he could be when running on the very limits of his body's function.

Or, he would, if he didn't have that whole doing meth to ease the mind of a drug dealer only to end up sitting on a corpse and having a snack thing hanging over his head. Bodily limits, altered state...Not a good combination, he'd learned his lesson.

"Now is our chance to get a good look around. You know this guy is hiding something awful, we have to find out what it is."

"We ruined his dinner party and he has been nothing but courteous. You are being an ass."

Vasyl flopped back down onto the bed, and picked up the oversized book that held all of the secrets to the evening, a veritable atlas of murder. Vasyl thought about opening it yet again, only to toss it to one side and press his palms to his face, rubbing wakefulness into it. "I'm too hungry to sleep."

"You didn't eat much of the cherry whatsit he made. It was actually very good."

"All I could see in my head were my grandmother's preserves. Rows and rows of bottles of grey blobs in red ink. They don't get cherries in that region. I don't want to imagine what was really in those jars." Vasyl sighed, giving up the fight. "Do you think he would mind if we raided his kitchen?"

Callum earnestly nodded his head in the affirmative and said, "No."

"You just want to snoop. This has nothing to do with my well being."

Callum ignored Vasyl's protests which were starting to veer into the realm of whinging, and if there was one thing he couldn't stand it was when that nagging, picking tone of his started taking over, begging and pleading and irritating in its insistence he listen to reason. "All I wanted was to talk about my paper. Things are not so bad that Dr. Lector has turned us out, so right now I still have some measure of security with my tenure..."

"You and your tenure," Callum snarled.

"Those lectures pay for the rent on my office!"

"Yes, your precious office, your rat infested little mess sitting smack in the centre of the worst neighbourhood in the entire state. I'm sure your patients love having to dodge bullets and crack whores on their way inside. Very therapeutic, making that kind of life threatening risk once a week."

"My office is not a rat infested hell hole!" Vasyl was wide awake now, just the condition Callum wanted him in. Though he would have preferred it without the browbeating. "Yes, I agree, it is located in a challenging area..."

"Your last patient had his car stolen and witnessed it from your office window."

"Certain times of day are not optimal."

"It was nine in the morning."

He would have liked to shoot more back at Vasyl, like the time he'd gone to the office and found a bum sleeping in the closet, stinking of piss and nestled amongst his patient records. Or when his last ill fated Volvo was brutally stripped by car thieves, with only the frame and chunks of paint remaining. And he was just about to get into a full on long winded diatribe of his own over how goddamned frustrating navigating his way through the constant, partially busted revolving door of insanity Vasyl's life was, only to be silenced so abruptly he nearly swallowed his tongue.

"I am working very hard to make us happy."

Oh no. No no no no. Not that glassy glint in the dark, that tiny little hitch in his voice, a little hook that starting picking away at Callum's heart and made him turn around and look and see the very beginnings of unshed tears being forced, unsuccessfully, to remain in tiny pools of sorrow held in by the pained creases around Vasyl's eyes.

Vasyl's lower lip began to quiver and Callum felt his heart die, like it always did, and he knew without Vasyl saying one word just what was about to start spilling out of that precious mouth in growing, reproachful hysteria. How hard it had been for both of them to relocate and leave their lives behind, how their careers and personal lives had suffered beneath the yoke of public opinion, how coming here, no matter how imperfect it currently was, it was so much better and it had taken so much sacrifice and and and...

'And I'm a prick," Callum thought, hating himself for being so easily manipulated by the wickedness of the truth. 'I'm a bloody wheezing stinking miserable shitbag prick.'

"Let's just go downstairs and I'll make you a sandwich or fry tofu or tempeh the ever living shit out of something, I don't know." Callum dared to place his palm against Vasyl's damp cheek, his thumb grazing away the latent frustration. "I know this was important to you. I'm sorry it didn't work out the way you wanted, but you have to accept that's how things are."

Vasyl's questioning pout was erased with a rather chaste kiss that Callum knew could easily become a passionate foray into silk sheets unknown. He held back, knowing this was one distraction that could be counted on for later. At present it was imperative that he get a good look around, for not only were Dr. Chilton's warnings reverberating with pressing urgency in his head, there were also the threads and pieces that had woven their way around Vasyl, morbid breadcrumbs he knew would end in death.

It was a good thing Dr. Lector was not a true post modernist and had the usual trappings of a confirmed bachelor-a love of antiques being one of them. A kerosene lamp from the nineteenth century was perched on the windowsill with a careful attention paid to how it tied into the rather gothic components of the bedroom. As Callum took out his lighter and lit it, it brought an expectant glow into the room that spoke less of cannibals yearning tasty human flesh and more of a cockblocked Heathcliff still seeking his Cathy.

He held the lamp between them, soaking them both in its golden light. They were always surrounded by fire here, he thought. Vasyl's pale skin took in the heady glow making it almost luminescent. His parted lips were too much for Callum to resist and he captured them again, this time being far more thorough than he intended, enough to elicit a pleasant gasp that he was very familiar with. He captured Vasyl's chin with a pinch of his fingers and pulled him towards him again, tongue lightly scraping across teeth and sliding well past those pretty lips He could feel Vasyl's body sinking against him, and as the moment grew so did the temptation to simply put down the lamp and give in.

Vasyl pulled away, eyes half lidded with sleepy lust in the dark. "You taste like words."

Callum gave him a confused half smile at this. "What kind of words?"

"Beautiful words," Vasyl said, closing his eyes and leaning in for more. "Annotations. Incunabula. Circulation." His breath was hot on Callum's mouth, Vasyl's lips moving in a seductive, speaking kiss upon Callum's. "Bibliography."

Instant images of Vasyl's unfortunate librarian being speared on his fork came to mind, and Callum gently, but firmly pulled away. "You're tasting *those* words. In *my* mouth."

Vasyl's dreamy expectation of seduction slightly faltered. "Yes. Are they not precious, indicative of the lofty achievements of learning, of the never ending stores of information each of us processes on a minute by minute basis? I appreciate such words, and tasting them on you is incredibly alluring...Indexing. Catalogue..."

"I think I ate your librarian."

Vasyl was still partially trapped in the desire that had been awoken within him, and it was with great difficulty that he extracted himself from Callum's allure and tried to understand what he had said.

"Why would you do such a thing?"

"Not on purpose-are you mad? By mistake!" He dredged up as much patience as he could in the face of Vasyl's confused expression. "Guess who they had for dinner?"

"Oh, you are joking."

Newly frustrated, Callum imitated Vasyl's accent, making sure to add his anxious cadence. "I am nnnot joking."

"That is an absolutely wild accusation to make against one of the most formidable men in my profession. Dr. Hannibal Lector is an esteemed psychiatrist, he is a consultant for the FBI and he is world renowned for his work. He has published papers that have formed mental health policies in several countries, including this one, and you dare to stand there and tell me he is some kind of monstrous cannibal! Ridiculous!"

"That is your ordered intellect talking."

"Oh stop it!"

"You are not paying attention to what everything around you is telling you. That is the crux of your core belief and you are ignoring it, and that is what is unacceptable. Put it together, damn you! A bloody moose. A bloody book with a bloody library card and your bloody librarian and now there's bloody words on my tongue and you bloody well couldn't stop talking about your bloody baby eating Baba in the wee hours of morn. How does this not add up to you?"

Vasyl's flash of anger was instantly replaced with a sudden, shivering fear. "I am not so sure what it is I'm supposed to do."

"I know exactly," Callum said, grabbing his arm and forcing him to follow. He held the lamp aloft and opened the bedroom door, illuminating the dark hallway into twisting shadows. "We're going into that kitchen and finding ourselves a bloody carcass."

It was a testament to how quiet the house was that certain sounds were amplified within it. As they crept towards the base of the stairs, it was clear the groans they heard were not part of an old Victorian home settling. As they paused at the landing, demands and declarations could be heard between the carnal punctuation, with smatterings of curse words in Russian that even Callum understood, and still more in a language he didn't.

"I'm not sure what they are doing up there," Vasyl said behind him. "But we should try it sometime."

A quick sweep of the drawing room provided nothing unusual and Callum didn't expect it to. As a place for show for any number of guests or victims, he assumed there would be no evidence of note here. The sparse, carefully selected furnishings weren't exactly welcoming, and Callum had to wonder just how often and who did Dr. Hannibal Lector entertain to create such a cold place for gathering. There was exactly one very uncomfortable looking sofa that looked as though it had never been sat in, along with a couple of occasional chairs, one of which was still perched at the dead fireside where Vasyl had repositioned it earlier.

Though beautiful, the overall impression Callum had of the house was that it was uninviting. Rather like the man himself.

Unable to stop himself from cleaning up a mess, the dessert plates had been washed and put away by Dr. Lector, leaving the dining room table a long slab of black wood that melted into the earthy darkness of the room. With the stone constructed herb garden casting shadows from the lamplight held in Callum's grip, it looked more like a thinly walled forest more than ever.

"The kitchen's through there," Callum said, motioning to the door, and it was with a strange hesitation that they approached it, the door pushed open with fingertips and the lamp quickly making a sweep of light inside, as though convinced the body of the librarian was going to be propped up and waiting for them.

He felt Vasyl let out a sigh of relief, his shoulder's slumping as he relaxed. "We are being foolish," he said, and trudged towards the fridge, only to wait and bid Callum to open it in case a nasty case of leftover pork roast was in evidence. It was, as well as some quality cheese and choice pieces of the assortment of fruits that had been on the dessert platter. Callum placed the lamp on the island in the centre of the kitchen, while Vasyl hunted through the cupboards until he found a plate and a tall glass for water. Wedges of artisan bread, some clumps of cheese and ample grapes turned into a meal, one which Vasyl made quick work of.

"I believe this blue cheese is one fashioned by the Benedictine monks. Such incredible quality, it is a rare treat to be indulging like this. I'm sure this wedge alone cost him a dear penny." Vasyl made himself comfortable on a kitchen stool and began popping grapes into his hungry mouth. "I feel like a thief raiding his fridge like this."

"You were cheated a meal." Callum began rummaging through drawers, noting with consternation that many of them were empty. It was nothing like his life at home, where every tiny cranny held a pile of papers or little bits of receipts and beer bottle caps and far too many piles of silverware for two people. One drawer had a vast collection of carefully labelled spices in small jars and then the next...Well, here was a bit of interesting...

Callum held up the baggie of dried mushrooms and knew, immediately, these were not the kind for soup.

"Jack. Pot." He tossed the baggie onto the counter in front of Vasyl, giving him a wide grin. "Looks like it almost turned into *that* kind of party."

Vasyl spoke around the crumbs of a large hunk of bread he had stuffed into his mouth, his words barely intelligible. "How very odd. I have known many of my peers to use unorthodox treatments in therapy, and am myself partial to psychedelics, but I would never have thought someone so fastidious as Dr. Lector would be one to dabble."

"My dearest, darling Vasyl, this man does not 'dabble'."

Callum dug deeper into the drawer and pulled out what looked to be several small homemade inked stamps, otherwise known as hits of acid. "LSD by the sheet, this here might be peyote-guess when he's in the mood to go organic-some little rounds of E..."

It was peculiar to find himself suddenly in his element, but there was a reason Callum found a job with the DEA so easily. When it came to mind altering substances, Callum was an eager magpie, searching out the best. He quickly slid open more drawers, sliding his hands past them into the space at the back and underneath and then moved on to the cupboards that surrounded them in a tall semi-circle. He found what he was looking for openly displayed in the corner cabinet, and let out a low whistle, depositing the booty on the island in the centre of the kitchen, right next to Vasyl's plate.

Vasyl picked up one of the bottles. "Morphine?"

"Opium eaters rejoice. How many bottles are these, six?"

"Seven," Vasyl said after a quick count.

"Inventory stands thus-two full packets of MDMA, a sheet of an unknown LSD concoction, half a baggie of shrooms, mescaline, lophophine, some bennies, seven 20 ml bottles of straight up morphine, a whole box of ibogaine." Callum couldn't stop himself from grinning wildly over the bounty. "World renowned, that's what you said. Is this prat a student of Freud or R.D. Laing?"

"This is very upsetting," Vasyl said, but he didn't stop eating. He pointed at the morphine with the butter knife he had used to cut slices of cheese. "I do hope this does not signify he is in the throes of some crippling addiction."

"Maybe the two of you should switch offices," Callum suggested.

Vasyl wouldn't dignify his retort with a reply and continued sawing into the cheese. "Are you going to report it?"

"Of course not, it's not worth it. If I'm going to ruin a man, it had better damn well be worth more than some piddly self destruction. Besides, he has friends, one in particular who seems to be quite the little fucked up fucker. Maybe some of this stuff is his." Callum reluctantly began putting the collection of illicit drugs back where he'd found them. "No weed. That's the real shame of it."

"Need I remind you that you are a drug enforcement agent?"

"I don't get why there isn't any green. There's always some green." He rifled through the spice drawer again but the oregano was stubbornly oregano. "Damn."

Callum began to pace the kitchen, his magpie sensibilities heightened by the find. He knew there had to be more, probably a lot more, hidden within the walls and floors of the house because in his experience no one with Dr. Lector's kind of money kept their mainstay addiction supply that low, especially when there was a party going on. That the man was an actual addict was a given...The psychedelics, especially the ibogaine, gave it away. Riding on the tripped out dreams to counteract the periodic withdrawals. Standard junkie logic.

A part of him wondered why he was even looking if he wasn't bothering to report it, but the lack of weed irked him and he was craving a cigarette and his only pack had been turned into nicotine soup in his pocket. A bit of green might get him over that addictive hump until morning. And since Dr. Lector was such a man of *variety*...

He opened the kitchen door and listened for movement upstairs, but the cries of carnal pleasure had finally subsided into snores. Relieved, he turned on the kitchen and dining room lights, his head swivelling back and forth across the walls and floor, searching for any small anomaly that might signify a hiding space.

Though he was a drunk, miserable, filthy, uncouth and didn't mix at all in polite company, he was a very alert magpie and had sussed out far more complex hiding spots than this. Within moments he found the little door in the floor, concealed beneath a rug under the massive dining room table. Fingertips shaking, he lifted it up, his attention constantly going towards the staircase, hoping with all his soul that the snoring drifting down was mutual.

"What are you doing?"

Dammit, but he nearly let the damn door drop!

"A secret lair. Care to come into the labyrinth?" Callum dared to open the door fully, revealing a set of stairs leading into what looked to be the basement. A waft of organic odours drifted upwards, and it was Vasyl who held his hand to his mouth, fearful of what it meant.

"It smells like my grandmother's barn."

"I doubt it glows in the dark." Callum began his descent and was halfway down when he turned back to Vasyl. "Are you coming? Bring the lamp."

"I don't think we should."

"Just get the damn lamp. Come on!"

Sighing, Vasyl did as asked, and began the slow descent into the basement. Bringing the lamp was superfluous, for unlike the rest of the house, the basement had an abundance of lighting, as though to bring all that transpired within it into a brilliant spotlight.

And what a spotlight it was. To their mutual dismay, Dr. Hannibal Lector had been a very precise butcher, but he had not yet finished his work of art upon the final remains. Pages of ancient texts had been stuffed into the body cavity of the librarian, folded into whimsical star shapes. Wire rimmed banners with rude limericks were entwined in an elongated circle in an empty space where the head would have been, and the stubs of the missing limbs were stuffed with tattered, bloodied index cards. Upon closer inspection, Callum could see the information on the cards was for various collections of nursery rhymes.

"Don't come in any further," Callum said to Vasyl, who was yet to see the spectacle and hopefully wouldn't. The last thing he needed was to have to drag his dead, fainted weight up a creaky flight of basement stairs.

He snatched a drop cloth from near the sink, noting that it had older stains on it. The very thought this had been done before made Callum retch. He covered the body as thoroughly as possible and then bid Vasyl to join him beside it.

"It's...?"

"Your librarian."

"You recognized his face?"

"No. I recognize the sentiment." Callum snatched a couple of stools he found and placed them in front of the body, bidding Vasyl to sit down. They both slumped onto the seats in unison, a mutually tired, miserable ennui washing over both of them.

"He stuffed him full of knowledge, wrapped his head in bawdy lyrics and chopped off his limbs with children's rhymes. In other words, he thought he was a haughty little asshole too."

"But he was a good librarian," Vasyl whined.

"He always had to have an opinion," Callum said, and shook his head.

Behind them, a long shadow began to creep.

Vasyl let out a very long, slow, suffering sigh.

"I wish we could get through one dinner date without having to find a corpse."


	9. Chapter 9

CERVALCES LATIFRONS

ix.

Four in the morning. The sun was set to rise within a scant three hours and Hannibal hadn't slept, the comfort of his large bed doing its best but unable to stop the racing thoughts that refused to leave him. Beside him, Will Graham slept with peaceful abandon, his breath even and content, his head lazily turned towards him on the pillow. He had wanted this scenario, expected it, even, but for Will to have been so enthusiastic, so full of *initiative*, that had been a pleasure well beyond the limits of his control.

He had been replaying the seduction in his head, pulling it from a very special shelf in his memory palace over and over, ensuring every drop of sweat, every cursing gasp was placed within it in shining clarity. Even now, as he traced his knuckles along Will's unshaven cheek and across his neck, down his shoulders and veering into the small dip just above his hips, Hannibal was adding to the memory's inventory. He dared to move closer and smiled as Will stirred in his sleep, the warmth of his body drenching the sheets in his scent. The air in the room was still thick with the lingering remnants of sex. Without touching him, Hannibal leaned towards Will's neck, his eyes closed as he breathed deeply of everything Will was made of.

It had been vicious. Invigorating. Will had followed him into the bedroom, and Hannibal could feel his eyes on his back as he slid off his tie, and carefully undid the buttons on his vest. "If it is curiosity that has brought you here, I will do all I can to satisfy it." Hannibal remained fixed in place, exactly three top buttons undone on his starched white shirt. "You need not fear me here, dear Will. As a close and trusted friend, you should not doubt that I can be an attentive lover."

He could feel Will's breath, hot and angry on the back of his neck. His voice sneered into Hannibal's ear, so full of venom it made his heart constrict tight in anticipation. "I am not here for *curiosity*."

He turned before Will could attack him, the blow to his shoulder sending Will reeling against the bedroom door. He recovered quickly and lunged at Hannibal, fists flying towards him, deflected with clumsy ease. Of course it was easy to overpower him, but what was the fun in always winning, when Will clearly had so much to offer?

He ran at him again, knocking him sideways against the headboard, a primal struggle of survival playing out as Hannibal captured Will's throat in his strong grip and made a half hearted attempt to squeeze. Will knocked his hands out of the way, and it was then that Hannibal felt the searing pain as it travelled with warning delight along the inside of his arm. He had been cut. Will was wielding a knife.

They fell back upon the bed, Will straddling him, the knife slashing at empty air as Hannibal managed to dodge his deadly strikes. One nicked his ear, and having had enough of this childish foreplay, Hannibal hooked his leg around Will's and thrust with all his weight, flipping the smaller man onto his back.

Hannibal pinned his shoulders, his body above him. Will still held the knife, the dull edge against his own throat, the sharp blade ready to slice should Hannibal dare to come closer.

"Is it so deadly to kiss you?" Hannibal asked.

"Just try it," Will said.

Had he ever felt more alive than he did that moment, with the blade in Will's hand ready to slice across his throat, to kill him should he forgo all reason and steal what was rightfully his from the man's lips? With Will's panting body beneath him, his heart racing beneath the beat of Hannibal's own, it was hardly a choice.

"If you want my life, you can have it." Hannibal inched closer, making sure the blade's edge was fully aligned with his throat. The quivering that shook through Will's body was unbearable, his need obvious and imprisoned within his jeans, pressed tight against Hannibal's own.

"There is nothing I would not give you."

With the sting of the blade against his throat, cutting into his flesh, Hannibal leaned forward, his lips grazing Will's. "Dear Will, I am giving to you what I have given no one else. Surely by now you understand. There are no limits when it comes to my love for you."

He could feel the blade digging as he pressed close, his lips capturing Will's, an answering tongue darting in mysterious question. Any second could mean his death, with Will moving his arm in a decisive slash, and Hannibal would pour his blood over him, baptizing him in the purest of spiritual truth.

But Will had released his grip on the blade. Had pushed Hannibal away to let it drop to the floor and then pulled him back, to gently lick at the superficial cut that had been delicately, beautifully, carved into Hannibal's throat. He closed his eyes, revelling in the sensation of Will's velvet mouth, his tongue soft and pliant, a teasing tenderness that travelled upwards past his chin, to his cheek, to rest in liquid iron resolve into the waiting openness of Hannibal's mouth.

He had not expected his body to respond so keenly, nor did he foresee the sudden urgency that erupted within Will, the need to tear at his shirt until the buttons popped, his coat shed to the floor, Will's hands busy and frantic as they worked zippers and belts and tore at fabric as though it was an enemy keeping him apart from his greatest pleasure. And when they were naked, flesh entwined and pliant, Will's hands were still busy, as though it wasn't enough, as though his wanted to tear off his skin as well and bring himself and his lover into a hot melted pool of blood and tangled bones.

He had taken him, he had been taken, it became a confusing Escher puzzle of flesh, so deeply entwined into a twisting physicality of the act of love it became pointless to pursue dominance. Their voices were disembodied, becoming a chorus to the music that had become their sinews, their exposed and tendered nerves.

He was reeling from it still, the music still playing at a distance upon the dreamlike waves of afterglow. Will sighed in his sleep and nestled close to him, his warm body against Hannibal's bringing a resurgence of that glorious symphony. He kissed him, lightly, on the forehead, and smiled at the thought of what morning could bring.

He would have been content to lay there, awake, simply staring at Will and marvelling at the beauty of his breathing, imagining the pink health of his lungs, his fingers lightly tracing the outline of them over his chest. He envied the cage of ribs that expanded and contracted over their spongy, sweet tenderness.

A curse brought him out of his meditation, and it with no small alarm that Hannibal realized Dr. Palanchuk and Callum Wilkes were also awake and were snooping throughout his house. He had assumed they would, and while the alternate plans he had made for them would have created a far more different kind of pleasant morning, he conceded that they were unrealistic at present. He wanted to bask in his triumph over Will's heart instead.

A creak in the floorboards in the vicinity of the dining room made Hannibal roll his eyes in annoyed despairing. Really, was there no end to this duo's constant sabotage?

He pulled himself away from Will with great reluctance, slipping on a pair of flannel pants and an old sweater to stave off the early chill. The house was still shrouded in darkness, a fact that would work to his advantage as he sought out his nosy guests who couldn't keep their curiosity to a minimum.

Not that he was chiding them for it, for there was a part of Hannibal that appreciated this sort of ferritlike tenacity, especially when the answers came to light as the result of a new, interesting theory. But they were careless investigators, making far too much noise and leaving lights on, the evidence of kitchen thievery obvious on the counter.

Dr. Palanchuk never did get a proper meal. The messy state of Hannibal's kitchen was another thing he was blameless for. This constant racking of innocence was grating on Hannibal's last nerve. The dining room table had been pushed aside to make room for the trap door, and all lights had been left on. If they'd wanted to shine a spotlight on their poor attempts at snooping this alone added a bullhorn.

Hannibal did not like sloppy work, and he was ruminating on this as he descended the stairs to his secret workshop, where beauty was fashioned from mutilated flesh. Perhaps he would offer up their pathetic dopplegangers as a love token to his dear Will. He could create a chimera of their hearts, weaving the two organs together, hands clasped over it in longing. A symbol of the depth of his affections, and the love he believed Will shared with him.

"Just once I would like to go out for dinner and not find a corpse."

Hannibal paused, his steps cat quiet as he made his way into the basement lair, the shadows beneath the low ceiling concealing him. Both Dr. Palanchuk and Callum Wilkes were behind the plastic curtain, the slab holding his latest work covered with a drop cloth-no doubt to keep to Dr. Palanchuk's strange phobia at bay.

Callum was struggling with something in his grip and it was with great consternation that Hannibal realized he had stolen one of his prized bottles of wine, a two hundred and fifty dollar bottle of Del Forno red.

"I knew he kept the good stuff hidden away."

"You thought he was hiding weed." Dr. Palanchuk sighed as he stared at the slab before him. "And a corpse."

"I was fully expecting to find a corpse, that was a given. So, technically, it's not 'hidden' if you have a good idea of where it is." Callum popped the cork with a penknife and took a swig before handing it to Dr. Palanchuk, who automatically did likewise before handing it back.

"I'm just so very tired of this." Palanchuk seemed to shrink where he sat, every measure of his energy drained from him. "Everywhere we go. We go to a movie, a man dies in the lobby. We go to a park for a picnic, a sniper takes out six people." He gave Callum a tired glance. "We go on a plane to America and we sit next to a dead man."

"A ten hour flight." Callum took another swig of wine at the memory. "Bastard had the window seat, too."

"We buy a lovely little house, and the day we move in we find the remains of a liquefied former tenant in the bathtub. That was especially vile."

Callum rolled his eyes and groaned at this. "We got twenty thousand knocked off the mortgage, that was a bloody wondrous discount. There's no reason for you to complain about that, not to mention the trauma clean up crew did a right proper job making that bathing room sparkle."

"I am sure he leaked into the wooden support beams." Dr. Palanchuk stared at the covered body in front of him with an expression of abject misery. This, coupled with his obvious exhaustion served to thicken his accent as he spoke, giving his voice a sultry quality. "Every time your boss, Chief Highsmith, comes to visit she says the shower smells like feet. It is not feet she is smelling, Callum. It is nnnot."

"Well there's no point whinging about all of that right now, is there? What are we doing about this?" Callum pointed the heel of the bottle of wine at the expired librarian before them. "Before you even say it, I have no intention of bringing this to the attention of the FBI."

Hannibal hid further into the dark at this, curious as to what Callum Wilkes had planned. Their odd conversation and the ease they had sitting next to the graphic example of his work made him wonder how different were they from himself and Will. Perhaps he had completely misjudged them, and they were twins not only in body but in sentiment as well.

"Oh but we have to!" Dr. Palanchuk near exclaimed, making Hannibal's eyes narrow with renewed predator vigour. How very disappointing.

"No, we don't." Callum turned to his companion, the bottle of wine now mostly empty. "Do you not want to test out your theory?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your bloody body count theory. This madman's a serial, you can see that is plain, and he's gone and offed a man who no one liked. The exception being you, because the exception is *always* you." Callum drained the last of the wine, and tossed the empty bottle onto the body. It landed in the centre with a soft, papery thud. "Your man here is greedy, and according to your theory there's more attention given to the serials. He's even gift wrapped this one, so he's aiming to get caught. With something this blatant, you can bet I can pull a willow branch off that tree near the main road and dowse out a dozen or so more on this property, I'm sure of it."

"I don't understand..."

"Think about it, he's like a control subject. You can get a clear statistic out of this. Blatant serial killer discovery and arrest times versus the time it takes to discover and arrest your average joe killer." Callum poked at the corpse with his finger, its stiff form rolling from the impact. "He's gone and dropped this right into your lap, and you have to see, to connect all the lines out of that universal mess and know that this is what you are supposed to do!"

Dr. Palanchuk hesitated slightly, only to concede to Wilkes' opinion. "It is an opportunity that has a double meaning for my work. Dr. Lector's murderous intentions mesh perfectly into both my theory of the displacement of homicidal investigations and the murkier physics of my fractal investigative techniques, which have brought his crime to light. As a unique subject, it would be foolish of me not put what he does under scientific scrutiny."

Callum rubbed his hands together. "So what is your plan?"

"To simply wait and see what happens. To satisfy the base need of curiosity."

Callum rose from his seat and bid Palanchuk to follow him. He paused at the plastic curtain, and turned back to the body, his hand quickly snatching up the empty wine bottle. "Best not to leave obvious evidence behind."

"Callum, don't be ridiculous. Of course he will know we were here."

"So we're in danger, then." Callum stepped carefully in front of Palanchuk, his jaw a firm line. "Should I bother uncovering it? Should I lay in wait here, ready to kill him?"

Dr. Palanchuk's mouth was a slight pout as he looked behind him at the swaying lines of thick plastic caging the body behind it. It was still covered in the tarp Callum had considerately placed over it to prevent him from fainting. "I think we have interfered with it enough. And no...I don't think we are in danger. That is not the impression I am getting, not at all."

"What impression are you getting?"

Dr. Palanchuk struggled to find the words. He shrugged over them, a wincing understanding creeping through them as he spoke. "That he is a noble predator and we are his carrion birds. We take our sustenance from the rotted aftermath of his kill."

Callum Wilkes stroked Dr. Palanchuk's cheek affectionately and Vasyl shuddered, but didn't pull away.

"Time to go upstairs," Callum whispered. "We can pretend to sleep."

He pulled the curtains open wide, allowing sunlight to stream in. Will groaned at the onslaught, his lithe body bathed in its cleansing brilliance. He blinked sleepy eyes into the morning, a curse at it leaving his lips. "What time is it?"

"Nine o'clock. We've overslept."

Will groaned, and grabbed his cell phone from where it had fallen to the floor. "Jack called four times. We missed the meeting and he's pissed." He stretched, muscles taut over the playful bruising of his skin, and Hannibal felt his breath catch, his mouth hungry to taste him again. "Are your unwanted guests still here?"

Hannibal did not hesitate. "They were in my basement."

He smiled to himself at the sudden, paralysing fear that wafted from Will, an intoxication tempered with the undercurrent of predatory expectation. "We need to kill them."

"Out of the question."

"Why?" Will sat up in the bed, the sheets pulled into a pile around him, his body shaking. "They are going to go to the police, they are going to expose us!"

"They will do nothing of the sort." Hannibal noted his confidence did little to put Will at ease, and with a small, knowing smile he bent his head and approached the bed, drawing the shaking man into a tight embrace. He sighed over the pleasure of his skin beneath his touch, and though he wanted to do so, so much more, he placed a chaste kiss onto Will's shoulder before bringing his lips to his ear. He pushed dark, soft curls out of the way, his tongue lightly exploring the curved lines of delicate cartilage. "Our esteemed guests, dear Will are, unfortunately, hopelessly insane."

He felt Will's body relax against his, a needful groan rising within his throat. He revelled in the warmth, and the even panting of his breath as Hannibal began to touch him, his lips pressed soft against his neck.

"Then what are we?" Will asked, his voice a harsh whisper.

Hannibal slid his hands down Will's sides, his chin resting on his shoulder. He smoothed his fingers along his hips, pushing aside the sheets he had wrapped around himself. Here was a special unveiling, a work of art for his eyes alone.

"We are in love," Hannibal said.


	10. Chapter 10

CERVALCES LATIFRONS

x.

He couldn't stop himself from humming. The symphony that had placed itself so eloquently into his heart was etching a delicate mark upon the healing cut at Hannibal's throat. He had touched the angry red line with reverence as he shaved that morning, the mirror also giving him the blurred image of Will through the glass shower door behind him. The thought of joining him had not been out of the question.

Nor was it denied.

The matching wound on Hannibal's arm still stung, and even now as he was making breakfast it seeped tiny dots of blood onto the sleeve of his white shirt. He was still humming the tune of his as yet unwritten melody, one he would need to commit to the keys of his harpsichord later. He would wait until Will came back from his delayed meeting with Jack, and he would spend another night here. He would wait until the object of his adoration was present before he would commit himself to the music. One kiss per note until the pleasantly sweet moment degenerated into them fucking each other amongst the tangled harpsichord strings and breaking the ivory keys with their knees.

Hannibal composed himself as he finished Will's omelette, unsure of where that last base sentiment had come from. It was one thing to string each other together tightly with the guts of the instrument, their bodies cut into pieces as they entwined within the beautiful notes-this he could understand-but it was quite another to ruin a perfectly good harpsichord.

His desire, his dear Will, was now in the kitchen, dressed and ready to leave him for his playacting with Jack Crawford. "I have made you breakfast," Hannibal said, placing the omelette with a flourish upon a black plate so as to better accentuate the various colours within it. There were bits of bacon, homemade of course, cured from a the flesh of a rude court stenographer . He offered it to him with a chaste kiss on the man's rough cheek, only to be given his softer lips in return.

"I'm famished," Will said, and grabbed a fork.

"As am I," Hannibal said, but he made no move to eat, instead content to watch as Will stood with his plate, the fork eagerly entering his mouth, tongue sweetly darting out to take in whatever may have strayed. That lovely, precious mouth that had been so very willing to learn...Hannibal felt a renewed hunger within him, and the thought of sexually destroying a harpsichord was suddenly not only reasonable, but necessary.

Sadly, the romantic notion was destroyed by a vile, phlegm laden cough that erupted through the dining room. Pushing his way in, Callum Wilkes staggered into the kitchen, wearing naught else but a pair of rather grubby grey briefs and his long, leather trench coat of many pockets. His sallow skin was pickled in the sweat of alcohol poisoning, his flesh giving off a sour smell. His eyes were bloodshot as they tried to bring Hannibal and Will into proper focus.

He offered no morning greeting, and instead gave Hannibal's prized coffee distiller a miserable sneer. "Are you making coffee or planning on giving me an enema?"

Will swallowed the bite of his omelette with difficulty and put the rest of it, untouched, on the kitchen counter.

"Callum it is getting very late in the morning, you know I have to get back into Baltimore before two. I have already called our insurance company and they are sending a temporary vehicle within the hour. Did you know moose damage is fairly common in this area in the spring? They did express surprise it was a female. It's usually male bulls that attack cars, thinking they are honing in on their bovine women." A fairly well put together Dr. Palanchuk stormed into the kitchen, the 'Concise History of The Pleistocene Era' tossed onto the centre island with angry impatience. He braced his palms onto the marble surface and openly glared at both Hannibal and Will and launched without hesitation into a furious diatribe:

"You ate my librarian. I can understand many things, I have myself been made aware of human history and know that eat or be eaten comprises much of its innate, Darwinian ethos. Had it been anyone else, I would offer up no words of concern, nor would I take anything more than a passing interest." He handed Callum Will's abandoned omelette and the filthy creature began stuffing his face. "But a *librarian*? A person dedicated to the pursuit of learning, to the very beauty of what it means to collect and gather the vastness of human creation? How very awful to see an educated man descend so low. Really, Dr. Lector, that was a great misuse of murderous intent. I should hope you are very ashamed of yourself."

Dr. Palanchuk made a move to get a cup of coffee only to be completely befuddled as to how to work the distiller. He pushed the empty mug near it towards him in aggravated confusion. "I can't imagine what he did to annoy you enough to make a roast of him!"

Hannibal remained stoic, his face a mask of eerily polite calm. "He ridiculed my interest in The Apocrypha. I found that to be very rude."

Callum Wilkes let out a snort of derision.

"The Apocrypha." Dr. Palanchuk's spat out the words as though they tasted like paste. "You ended a man over non canonical, superstitious shit!"

Dr. Palanchuk's words hit Hannibal like a slap. Confused, Hannibal put his hand to his cheek, feeling the outraged, virtual sting.

"If that offends some latent religiosity within you, I refuse to apologize. This is some arrogant construction from your own cultural reference, from which you took misguided offence. If he lamented your misunderstanding of the Upanishads or the musings of the Siddharta Buddha, your reaction would be quite different, no doubt benign. Presently, my librarian's corpse is digesting the Book of Enoch. Thus, this is your prejudicial, skewed vision of spiritual enlightenment wrapped up in your archaic concepts of a godhead and your overwrought pride. Shall we tar and feather his roast, too, for calling you out on your foolishness!"

Hannibal's eyes glinted black, his fury held at bay within him in sickening waves of calm that barely skimmed the surface of his boiling rage. He glanced at Will, seeking his divinely appointed lover's approval, only for Will to shake his head as he silently mouthed "I told you so."

Hannibal braced his shoulders, his eyes steel as he took in the occupants of his kitchen. He glanced behind him at Callum, who suddenly seemed to be an image from one of Will Graham's feverish visions. Shadows gave the impression of elongated crow's feathers that sprung from his back. Sunlight streamed over his profile through the open kitchen window, and a small cloud of flies flew in, surrounding him.

"So what is the crime I have truly committed?" Hannibal tersely asked Dr. Palanchuk. "I am aware you are not going to report the murder and I, too, am curious to see how your theories play out when put to the test. But it seems your version of morality is not satisfied. So, if you could explain, what reason do you have to chastise me?"

Dr. Palanchuk glanced towards Callum at the window, the buzz of flies a death's halo around the unkempt man. As though drawing strength from this crow that had flown into their midst, Dr. Palanchuk clenched his fists on the marble countertop and said, in a voice crackling with hurt: "It was rude."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me, Dr. Lector. You ate my librarian and it was a *rude* thing to do." Dr. Palanchuk stared at the bubbling black coffee in its strange little round beaker with such longing Will took pity on him and poured him a cup.

Hannibal was gobsmacked.

"I had no idea he had any connection to you. The murder was not a slight directed at your person. Conversely, I found myself in that position when I met the man. You may not have taken the drastic measures I felt necessary, of course."

"I am not a cannibalistic serial killer, so no, I'm afraid not."

"Then we are at an impasse, Dr. Palanchuk. I do not know how to provide you with restitution."

This game had gone on long enough, and Hannibal had grown weary of it. He was about ready to forgo all plans of retaining their bodily twin insurance and simply murder them then and there, tossing their fetid corpses into the basement and quickly making a hash of them. They had definitely overstayed their welcome and the least that miserable, whining little communist reject could do would be to hand over his damned book and get out!

Hannibal grabbed it, the slim volume an uneven weight in his hand that was steadied by Dr. Palanchuk.

"This book would be an excellent recompense."

"Since you have such an unnatural attachment to it, I would be more than pleased that you continue to enjoy it." Hannibal released it, and Dr. Palanchuk eagerly tucked it under his arm.

"That is very kind," Dr. Palanchuk said, and all animosity was immediately quashed within his genuine smile. He raised the mug as though to toast the morning and took a sip of it, black without sugar. "Incredible. There really is no elixir better to bring a man back to himself."

Hannibal's anger had not abated so quickly, however, and the minutes seemed to drag into hours as inwardly he begged a deity he knew didn't exist to get these creatures out of his house. It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep his decorum, especially as he found himself flanked by both Will and Callum. On his left stood Will, clean and blissfully softened by the events of the morning, his intellect and body sending a flame into Hannibal's heart that he longed to feed. Conversely, to his right, stood Will's vile, disgusting double, a man so proud of his putrescence and apathy even the flies buzzing around his head had second thoughts of landing on him. Callum gave Hannibal a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and this, coupled with the conflicting sensations that welled within him when he looked to his left, gave him a severe case of emotional vertigo.

Callum scratched the side of his head, one eye half open as he stared out into the brightness of the morning. "The car is here."

Such a miracle!

Callum grunted in tired disapproval. "It's another fucking Volvo."

"It's always a Volvo," Dr. Palanchuk replied and continued sipping at his coffee.

Will frowned. "Did you request one?"

Dr. Palanchuk looked up at him over the rim of his white mug. "No."

There was no sweeter vision than watching them leave, goodbye's politely exchanged with a pointed absence of invitation to come back again. The unbearable strain of nicety had worn Hannibal to the whites of his bones, and he collapsed onto the uncomfortable couch in his drawing room in exhaustion. "You're right," he said to Will. "I should have killed them."

"They couldn't go on your table," Will said. He sat carefully beside Hannibal, who dared to sink closer to him. "Dr. Palanchuk lived in the exclusion zone, his body is so full of radiation we're at risk of getting cancer just from him handling your silverware."

"And that vile bottom feeder he sleeps with...I wanted to choke the life out of him and yet the very thought of putting one hand on him was like petting a fermenting slug."

Will rubbed at the back of his neck with his palm, unfriendly kinks still wedged in his spine. Hannibal brushed his hand aside and gave him a proper massage, the muscles lining his vertebrae melting into his touch.

"They had sex in your guest bed, I'm sure of it."

Hannibal's stomach instantly lurched as he dry heaved at the thought. "I will burn the sheets."

He draped an arm around Will's shoulders, and pulled him in close, the nagging thought that this new, special intimacy was the direct result of his guests' influence. No, he couldn't entirely fault Dr. Palanchuk, much as he wanted to.

He kissed into Will's curls and his heart surged, on fire.

"He's a very dangerous man." Will's head shook slightly, his eyes blinking at some insight that had suddenly attacked him. He buried his face in Hannibal's neck, and he allowed the delicious comfort. "You are, as I define you, the devil himself. Whoever comes into your path is touched by your evil. Your destruction is primal and personal." Hannibal could feel the furrow of Will's brow against his skin. "Dr. Palanchuk's touch is full of decay. You felt it, I know you did. You do terrible things waiting for the proof of God, waiting for him to stop you. Palanchuk pulls God out of everything around him, one random thing after another and ties it to an end point." Will raised his head, his eyes wide and piercing deep into Hannibal's own. "You destroy people. Palanchuk destroys the world."

Hannibal chuckled at this. He slid an affectionate finger along Will's cheek. "A tad dramatic, don't you think?"

Will pressed his forehead against Hannibal's and closed his eyes. Hannibal closed his as well, a soft smile on his lips as drew Will into a tighter embrace.

"He has your fingerprint on the book," Will said.

Hannibal felt a slow shock creep over him, a feeling grossly mismatched with the warm pleasure of Will pressed tight to him. He sank his face into the man's dark curls, drowning in his worried, pensive scent, and tried, desperately, to not think of bombs and wastelands and the intricate, piecemeal unravelling of his universe that Dr. Vasyl Palanchuk had so thoughtlessly begun.

Callum Wilkes wriggled into his pants in the front seat. He'd been so eager to leave Dr. Lector and his house of horrors behind he hadn't even bothered to get dressed. Now he fussed within the confines of yet another stupid little Volvo, buttons and zippers not co-operating.

They passed the ruined husk of metal, which was being hoisted onto a flatbed truck, shards of glass and chunks of engine spilling onto the forest floor. There was no sign of the dead calf. Callum slid on his white shirt, still stained with the dried blood of its mother. He glanced towards the back seat, and thought about picking up the Concise History Of The Pleistocene Era, only to sink with a sigh back into his seat and ignore it.

"Do you think they've caught on we picked up some insurance?"

"Undoubtedly. Dr. Lector is a very intelligent man."

"He's going to try to kill us."

"Of course he will. And I do appreciate you using the word 'try', it makes me feel that my optimism is rubbing off on you." Vasyl reached over and squeezed Callum's shoulder, the man's cheerfulness getting on Callum's last, fractured nerves. "I believe Dr. Lector will forever try to destroy me. Don't give me that look, Callum, I assure you he will be frustrated in his efforts."

Callum pulled on his seatbelt and tried to relax. Which was difficult since they'd just spent an entire evening and morning pissing off a vicious serial killer. That sort of rumination had a habit of keeping a man on edge. "What makes you so sure?"

"He is a man dedicated to control. It is an unfortunate belief system, and only tragedy can be its outcome. He will inevitably be crushed by the weight of variables."

Callum closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat, his soul full of angsting worry. "Let's just hope he gets crushed before he can do us in. You're sure you saw a spot of the librarian's blood in that damned book?"

"I did."

"He'll hunt us down for it, he's that kind of devil."

"I hope he does. It will be an interesting further test of my fractal theory."

With his eyes closed, Callum tried to envision what it would be like to live a life like Dr. Hannibal Lector's. One so pristine and full of clean lines that ended in murder in a calculated, reasoned out fashion. Not for Dr. Lector the fractal shit slinging that was Callum's life at present, the tempestuous revolving door of destruction.

'You made your choice,' his inner voice said, and he cursed it.

Will Graham was no different. They were perfectly matched. Dr. Lector had carefully cocooned his partner in crime in the silken threads of his careful structure. He had conquered him and Will Graham was the prized object within that pristine, orderly elegance.

"What are you thinking about?" Vasyl asked, breaking the pensive silence that had erupted within the small car.

Callum didn't open his eyes. "I'm thinking of how much I hate pork."

The Volvo wound its way along the roads leading out of the forest, putting the distance of the universe behind it and before it. Beneath its wheels possibilities were ground into dust and discarded. The Volvo veered past the sharp tips of millions of trees, a colourful horizon that beckoned them towards its anarchy. It sped towards ruination and unexpected turns and the feeling of being lost. It took them on four speeding rubber wheels into the very maw of life's fury.

He was looking forward to going home.


End file.
